Cricket fans were caught in awe, shock, and were all touched by the strong message that former players and match commentators gave concerning the ongoing movement for the Black Lives matter campaign. This happened in the most recent match between England and the West Indies, which was hit with great inconvenience due to the sudden rain that poured down.
Although the experience and the game were not as fans and players would have wanted, the feeling of disappointment was quickly taken back as fans were treated to a surprisingly touching comment about the BLM movement.
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In their opportunity to call the match for the Sky Sports broadcast, West Indian fast bowler Holding and ex-England player Rainford-Brent gave what fans are calling as one of the most powerful messages ever given on live sports television. In the broadcast, both players shared their experiences about racism.
“I had comments about where I grew up and the fact I had a long name maybe my mum didn’t know who my dads were,” Rainford-Brent said. “About my hair, about body parts — especially the derriere, shall we say, about the food I ate and that it sort of stank.”
“It was just constant, ‘do I wash my skin? Everyone in my area gets stabbed’,” he continued. “All these sorts of things were drip-fed constantly. I’ve been in team environments, dealing constantly with people referring to ‘your lot’. I’m not surprised that people who come into the environment don’t want to deal with that. It can be really difficult dealing with that day-in, day-out.”
Holding, on the other hand, said that people need to understand that the Black Lives Matter movement is not a call just for the black community but rather a plea for equality.
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“If you don’t educate people, they’ll keep on growing up in that sort of society, and you’ll not get meaningful change,” he said. “Everyone is recognizing it. Everyone is now coming alive and seeing the difference in treatment of people.
We’re all human beings, so I hope people will recognize that this Black Lives Matter movement is not trying to get black people above white people or anyone else. It’s all about equality.
“What people need to understand, this stems from a long time ago, hundreds of years ago, the dehumanization of the black race is where it started,” Holding added.
By the time he is closed to finishing his piece, Holding was already on the verge of tears as he condemned people who refuse to believe in “white privilege.”
“They keep telling me there is nothing called white privilege,” he said. “I don’t see any white people going into a store off the street and being followed. A black man walks in, someone is following him everywhere he goes. That is basic white privilege. Whether the white person wanted to rob the place or not, he’s not going to be thought of that way and things like that have to change.”
The campaign for Black Lives matter was reignited and given new fire when George Floyd, a black American man, was killed in an incident involving a white police officer from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Derek Chauvin. Since then, various sectors and industries have joined in the protests against racial discrimination.
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