New Guard Against Uneven Bounce

English sports has gracefully acknowledged the Black Lives Matter movement. But cricket, football and all other sectors need to have people from diverse ethnicities in senior management positions.

- Monty Panesar

CRICKET has started in the UK. Since the Black Lives Matter movement many organisations, as well as sports bodies, have demonstrated a positive message. In the Premier League, players’ names were replaced with #BLM.

When it comes to delivering an important message, cricket keeps on getting it right. Why is it that cricket gets it right and other organisations can’t deliver the same message, like the small speech Michael Holding gave in July during an England vs West Indies Test. The reason being that cricket finds it eas­ier to embrace diversity. Diversity is about recognising that we all succeed in different ways. A cricket team has batsmen, bowlers, a wicket­keeper, but batsmen differ between openers and the middle­order; so do leg­ and off­spinners, medium pacers and fast bowlers. With this innate diversity in skill, cricket just deals with racial issues better than other sports.

It was the diversity in the England team that allowed them to win the World Cup. Companies can learn from successful teams like that. It can serve as a blueprint for senior manage­ment for building successful teams. The structure of the team lays the foundation of its success. And the best of structures are multicultural. Eoin Morgan’s team drew strength from diverse backgrounds: Jofra Archer is from Barbados, Ben Stokes from New Zealand, Jason Roy from South Africa and Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali have Pakistani backgrounds.