Few home comforts at Chelmsford for nominal series hosts, but plenty of lessons for the international game
Andrew Miller10-May-2023They came in droves. From Newham and Whitechapel, from Dagenham and Redbridge, all #BackingGreen as the Cricket Ireland hashtag implored, and turning an improbable suburban enclave in Essex into the ultimate home-from-home.Unfortunately for the nominal hosts Ireland (although not, it must be said, unexpectedly), the #Green in question had a more tigerly tinge to it, as London’s Bangladeshi community seized on the chance for a raucous day out in Chelmsford – and by the time they’d all been sent hurtling back towards the tube network by a dramatic late-afternoon thunderstorm, it was as if they’d come armed with Dhaka’s rainy-season weather too.And so, when Mark Adair spoke afterwards to Ireland’s lone media representative in front of an abandoned, waterlogged outfield, to reflect on the washout that had ended his side’s hopes of automatic World Cup qualification, the day’s prior events all felt a bit like a fever dream.Related
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The flags, the drums, the face-paint, the cuddly tiger toys. None of that remained, just a desperately dank media marquee with raindrops sheeting down the plastic windows – which, ironically, was perhaps Ireland’s first true taste of home (dis)comfort, seeing as a washout in temporary facilities at Malahide was exactly what they had been seeking to avoid when the decision was made to outsource this, their final Super League campaign.But, with apologies to Ireland’s now-deferred tilt for World Cup qualification, this had still been one of the more notable rain-wrecked ODIs. Not so much for the performances (mighty though Mushfiqur Rahim’s birthday half-century had been), but for the lessons that were learned about the resilience of the format.At a time when the international game is feeling the squeeze like never before – with the return of Ireland’s star seamer, Josh Little, from the IPL embodying the wrench of priorities that the world’s leading players are currently feeling – there was a vitality to the day’s events that underlined what stands to be lost if an endless treadmill of T20 leagues becomes the norm.All things being equal, Ireland versus Bangladesh is precisely the sort of contest that even the most fervent of cricket fans could be forgiven for overlooking, but if the Chelmsford experience reminds us of anything, it is that passion cannot be faked. It may be the smallest ground on the county circuit, but with more than 3000 Bangladesh fans packing out its stands, it offered up a stage on which those supporters could celebrate the ties that still bind them to a homeland that, in many cases, they left behind several generations ago.The top deck of the Tom Pearce Stand throbbed all day long, with its oversize Bangladesh flag shimmering to every half-chance, and with the whole crowd bursting into a rendition of “Happy Birthday” (complete with specially printed banner) as Mushfiqur made his way to the middle in the 22nd over of the day.They came in droves, and turned an improbable suburban enclave in Essex into the ultimate home-from-home•Cricket IrelandAnd even when the rain arrived to ruin a keenly poised contest, a significant throng stayed back to the bitter end, braving the lightning strikes that at one stage even fried the grimly static replay screen, so that they could line the route from the pavilion to the team bus to bid their heroes goodnight.”When the crowd comes to see the match, players always enjoy,” Najmul Hossain Shanto said at the close. “It is always helpful for our game. Some of the players have family here, probably they will come in the next match as well. The crowd here was 80-90% from Bangladesh. We didn’t feel that much [like visitors].”And so the inevitable question arises. Could any of this be adapted to help safeguard the long-term future of international cricket? Of course, the notion of neutral-venue internationals isn’t exactly a new one. It’s 111 years since the 1912 Triangular drowned in weather not dissimilar to Chelmsford’s denouement, while Pakistan spent more than a decade in the desert – metaphorically and otherwise – after their security situation drove them from their homeland in 2009.Prior to setting up a new base in the UAE, Pakistan also played two memorable Tests against Australia in England in the summer of 2010, including a second Test at Headingley that tapped into Yorkshire’s diaspora every bit as effectively as Chelmsford did for East London’s. The fact that that ECB-PCB relationship did not continue into future seasons owed rather more to the events at Lord’s later that summer than to any sense that the bottom line did not add up.This time, however, you wonder if the timing feels more apposite. Perhaps not for Ireland in the short term, whose years as a Full-Member Nation have inadvertently come to epitomise the international game’s slow-puncture (although let’s judge the strength of their own diaspora if cricket ever manages to tap into the US market).
“A day like today is a celebration of the trust and confidence in our relationship with the Bangladeshi community”Arfan Akram, Essex’s East London Operations Manager
But for the international game as a whole – faced with a haemorrhaging of TV revenue that hastens a vicious spiral of decline – there’s never a bad time to be reminded that the game exists because of its fans, and not because of its rights deals. Bangladesh’s supposed lightweight status has meant that latter factor has been allowed to determine their value to England – by whom they haven’t been invited in a bilateral capacity since 2010 – even though the sheer joy that they bring to their support has lit up two of the last six English summers, thanks to their involvement in the 2017 Champions Trophy and the 2019 ODI World Cup.And there’s another pressing factor at play too, one that Essex in particular recognise all too well. English cricket’s ongoing racism reckoning is set for another seismic moment when the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) finally sees the light of day, and when it does, the game as a whole can expect a litany of criticism on the grounds of class, race and gender. What’s more, Essex themselves are also braced for the findings of Katherine Newton KC’s report into specific allegations at the club, many of which were raised by their former player, Jahid Ahmed, who also happened to be the first British Bangladeshi to play county cricket.And, right there, is the nub of the issue for the English game. Tower Hamlets, where a third of London’s Bangladeshi community lives, is barely half an hour door-to-door from the County Ground while Jahid himself was born in the city of Chelmsford, even though he described the club on his doorstep as “a white man’s world where brown people were outsiders”.It is all evidence of a huge and shamefully untapped market. And yet, those same fans who flocked to Tuesday’s game might not have turned out in such force had it not been for the chance to congregate around their heritage, and effectively embrace that outsider status. It all points to a design flaw at the heart of international cricket – one that effectively runs counter to the expectations of multiculturalism – and if the ICEC is to offer any sort of closure to English cricket, it will be obliged to map out a resolution that cuts both ways.BCBBut to judge by an undeniably uplifting afternoon at Essex, English cricket is already better prepared to deal with whatever fallout awaits, not least because the concessions required to make Bangladesh’s fans feel welcome on such an occasion – the installation of a prayer room in the indoor school, for instance, or the provision of halal food, and the scaling-back of alcohol outlets in anticipation of a predominantly Muslim crowd – are now part of the club’s everyday considerations, rather than just tacked on reluctantly at the end of a planning meeting.”A day like today is a celebration of the trust and confidence in our relationship with the Bangladeshi community,” Arfan Akram, Essex’s East London Operations Manager, told ESPNcricinfo. Akram’s remit includes the ECB’s acclaimed new hub in Leyton, where much of the face-to-face engagement with those communities takes place. On any given night in the nets, club players are likely to rub shoulders with current Essex players such as Feroz Khushi or Aron Nijjar, and even the former Bangladesh spinner Enamul Haque, who is now a coach at Newham College.And the net effect of that grassroots outreach has already been felt in the lead-up to these three matches, as Akram explained.”Demand for cricket in East London is outstripping supply,” he said. “The beauty of these three games is that we haven’t been using a central sales platform, it’s us sending WhatsApp messages and the system going mad in ticket sales. That can only happen if there’s a culture in the club that people want to be a part of.”The historic incidents will need their time, and fair process, and we’ll be able to move forward when we have closure. But this will help us in the long-term transition of the club.”None of which is of any immediate consolation to Ireland, of course. On the eve of the game, their captain Andy Balbirnie had conceded that his team’s presence in England for such a crunch contest was “slightly disappointing”, and that their “home” status was set to be anything but. And yet, here they were regardless, embracing the fanaticism that their opponents brought to the occasion, and accepting into the bargain that the health of one is the health of all when it comes to the fragile ties that keep international cricket viable.
