Inside the cricket change room: undressing whiteness in South Africa

ABSTRACT

South African cricket was awakened to the crudity of racial exclusions when former Proteas fast bowler Makhaya Ntini revealed that he would rather run to the ground and back than take the team bus to avoid his white team-mates who, he felt, were isolating him because of the colour of his skin. Ntini’s revelation of the pain of loneliness was followed by a plethora of similar ones by Black cricketers, sparked by young Proteas player Lungisani Ngidi’s call in early July 2020 for the team to consider supporting the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. This prompted visceral condemnation from several white former Proteas players. Against this backdrop, this article explores the relationship between whiteness and cricket in contemporary South Africa.

KEYWORDS:

• Whiteness
• black lives matter
• transformation
• CSA
• Lorgat
• Ngidi

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The 456-page Fundudzi report into corruption at CSA was made public by the Interim Board in November 2020.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Goolam Vahed

Goolam Vahed is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of KwaZulu Natal. His research interests include identity formation, citizenship, ethnicity, migration and transnationalism among Indian South Africans as well as the role of sport and culture in South African society in peer-reviewed journals. His most recent (co-authored) works include A History of the Present. A Biography of Indian South Africans,1994–2019 (Oxford) and Colour, Class, and Community. The Natal Indian Congress and the Struggle to Defeat Apartheid 1971-1994 (Wits). E-mail: [email protected].

Ashwin Desai

Ashwin Desai is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. His research interests include sport, political economy, and social policy. His latest works include Reverse Sweep: The Story of Cricket in Post-apartheid South Africa (Jacana) and Wentworth: The Beautiful Game and the Making of Place (UKZN). E-mail: [email protected].