How Renegades quick started a conversation about race

Josh Lalor has been one of the Melbourne Renegades' key recruits for BBL|10, but his most important deliveries this season might well have come away from the cricket field.

Lalor is one of the KFC BBL’s few Indigenous cricketers, yet having had what he terms a "pretty white-Anglo upbringing" in Western Sydney, he has previously struggled to find ways to express his views on racism.

While the Black Lives Matter movement that saw enormous numbers take to the streets in cities all over the world resonated strongly with him, the idea of protest does not come naturally to the 33-year-old fast bowler.

"The trouble with racism is that you're either telling people it doesn't exist, and it isn't that bad, and everything is fair and equal, or you're at the other end as a minority and to be heard you've got to shout from the rooftops," Lalor told cricket.com.au.

Lalor doesn’t want to shout. Indeed, he does not want to take a knee before games, as athletes around the world have done, with the Renegades instead opting to take their hats off before games in solidarity with those who do.

What Lalor really wants is a conversation.

A phone call earlier this year from his childhood friend Pat Cummins, who grew up only 15 minutes away from him, suggested the Australian men's team had been going through a similar struggle ahead of their limited-overs tour of England.

"He had called around ideas for what the national team could do in that space," said Lalor. "I spoke to a few different people who worked in this area and settled on this idea."

What emerged was the Reflect Forward campaign, a joint movement between racism education company One Love Australia and Australian cricket.

The result has been a series of frank, filmed conversations between Australian cricketers that have both highlighted undercurrents of racism in the game as well as the shifting attitudes of those who might otherwise have been the ones perpetuating it.

Using question cards as conversation starters, Tim Paine and Pat Cummins, Moises Henriques and Jake Weatherald, and Harry Conway and Andre Adams have all participated in the campaign. It is hoped more athletes from other sports will partake in the coming months.

The most confronting tale comes from Henriques, who explained how a lifetime of "harmless" jokes that he had largely turned a blind eye to came to a head while he was batting in a Sheffield Shield game at the WACA Ground.

"There were a handful of people in the stadium and there was one bloke who just kept shouting racist jokes," Henriques, who was born on the Portuguese island of Madeira, recalled in his conversation with Weatherald.

"They weren't racist jokes I hadn't heard from my mates (before) but out in the middle, just two batters and the eleven fielders, no one was doing anything.

"I remember saying to the umpire, 'Are you going to do anything about this? It's not acceptable.' But I remember reflecting after that game and I thought, 'I've let my own friends say that to me'."

In his discussion with former New Zealand fast bowler Andre Adams, who is of Caribbean descent, Conway freely admitted it had been him who had previously made those type of seemingly innocuous jokes.

"I've got a lot of remorse for that," said Conway. "There have certainly been occasions where I look back now where I realise I've been part of the systemic issue, where I've not said no or I haven’t had the courage to stand up to it.

"I did it when I was younger because I wanted to be part of the joke. I wanted to make people laugh and be a part of the majority. It's easier to make the decision to join the herd rather than standing up to something.

"I didn't know enough about it."

For Lalor, Conway's concession that he has perpetuated racism and now wants to be educated is exactly the type of reaction he hopes others can relate to and reflect on.

"In Harry, they're the guys I went to high school with, they're the guys who you play club cricket with," said Lalor.

"(The notion that) jokes are okay because they're meant in jest – you don't understand how people at the butt of the joke are taking it and they might not understand your intent.

"The chat with Harry was excellent because we've probably all been part of jokes like that and we think they're not that big of a deal and we're only now learning that is.

"That's all you can ask of people.

"All you want to do is turn the mirror on them and ask 'Have you done this? Do you think we might be better off if this wasn't around?’"

The Australian men's team came in for heavy criticism from West Indian legend Michael Holding for making "lame" excuses for not taking a knee in solidarity with BLM protests while they were in England.

Justin Langer has since admitted they did not give the issue enough thought.

Test skipper Paine's revealing 15-minute conversation with vice-captain Cummins suggests that is beginning to no longer be the case.

"My (perspective) has only started to change in the last 12 months," Paine said in his discussion with Cummins, who spoke about how reading Bruce Pascoe's book Dark Emu had given him a greater appreciation for Indigenous cultures. 

"I was probably someone, if I'm totally honest, that had my head in the sand a little bit because it wasn’t part of my world, I didn't have it as a big issue.

"That's really opened my eyes to issues Indigenous people, Black people and people of all cultures around the world go through. I had just turned a blind eye a bit… I probably didn't realise how bad it was for people, even nowadays."

Image Id: FE707472C93B451F9EC709A19FF7EE0D Image Caption: Australia performed a Barefoot Circle ahead of the first Test // Getty

As an Indigenous man who has contributed to CA's anti-racism efforts and who has played with and against the likes of Cummins and Paine for the best part of a decade, Lalor is uniquely placed to understand the perspectives of both Holding and of leading figures in Australian cricket.

"Michael Holding's comments were excellent I thought but you've also got to look at it through the eyes of 'Finchy' (limited-overs captain Aaron Finch) and those guys and perhaps at that time they didn't have the requisite knowledge," said Lalor, who now works in high performance with Cricket New South Wales.

"I think they were just caught off-guard. There were no bad intentions and I think there was an expectation from the public to be maybe further down the line of knowledge on this topic than what they were.

"That is also a tough expectation for people for whom this is really new.

"That was one of the ideas of this concept – to meet people where they are and increase their knowledge, not to judge Aaron Finch, Pat Cummins, Tim Paine or whoever else for where their knowledge is.

"Seeing guys of that influence get involved, I'm really proud and thankful.

"The scariest thing is for people to say no. Not because they're bad people, but because they're not comfortable showing their vulnerability."

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