Willie Donald says Scottish cricket must follow the recommendations of an independent review into racism in the sport.
But the former Scotland player and ex-Cricket Scotland president believes the report could have gone further and also worries that financial constraints may prevent the governing body from taking the appropriate action.
The organisation’s board resigned on Sunday ahead of the report’s publication and funding body sportscotland has effectively taken control of Cricket Scotland until October 2023.
Donald revealed he was not interviewed for the review despite being Cricket Scotland’s interim chief executive in 2015 and also serving on the board from 2017-2021, with two of those years as president.
The current president of Aberdeenshire Cricket Club was interim chief executive when Scotland’s leading wicket taker Majid Haq was sent home from the 2015 World Cup and suspended for suggesting his omission from the final game was because of race.
Haq never played for Scotland again and last year called for the review into racism.
Donald said: “It seems that Plan4Sport only interviewed the current board and given that Majid Haq’s complaint about how he was treated in 2015 started this process I thought it might have been pertinent to talk to board members going back at least that far.
“Racism is unacceptable, as is any form of discrimination, totally unacceptable and I think a lot of the report’s recommendations have to be put in place.
“However, they did not interview key people who were witnesses – for example – in the Majid Haq affair.
“I was a key witness because I was interim chief executive, I handled the Majid Haq affair when he came back from the World Cup in Australia already banned for three months.
“His contention is that he was left out of the Scotland squad because of race.
“Majid was left out because he did not meet the fitness standards required for an upcoming T20 tournament that we were playing in July.
“When he was suspended we organised a personal training plan for him in Glasgow, supervised by the then head of cricket performance.
“We then came to the end of his suspension, which was for something he did in Australia and he was totally unfit.
“We all know the fitness requirements of playing high level sport and he had a permanent problem with fitness.”
Lack of diversity
The review concluded that there was a lack of diversity within Cricket Scotland, but Donald believes some progress has been made in this area.
He added: “In 2015 the new chairman Tony Brian asked if I would be interim chief executive it and I did it for five months.
“At that time I witnessed a huge effort by the chairman to change the culture around Cricket Scotland’s governance and how we ran the organisation.
“I thought huge steps were made and bear in mind we had to change everything from finances to culture to everything about the way the organisation operated which included the recruitment of board members.
“There’s criticism of the lack of diversity on the board but that must only be looking at the current board who resigned.
“When I was there we’d moved from white, male and stale to having board members from ethnic minorities, we had female board members for the first time and we had external non-executives.
“My successor as president was a woman (Sue Strachan) so I don’t accept moves in terms of diversity haven’t been made in the period since 2015.”
Funding required
The review also found within Cricket Scotland there is “no consistent mechanism or process for handling racist incidents” and recommended the hiring of new staff including an anti-racism and equality, diversity and inclusion manager, discipline manager and human resources manager.
Donald called on funding body sportscotland – who commissioned the review – to provide the resources to fill these positions.
He said: “When you’re running an organisation when it comes to hiring you’re limited by budget.
“Sportscotland has sponsored this review, sportscotland put £440,000 a year into cricket and the ICC puts in £1million and there’s a wee bit more from sponsors.
“From that budget you’re expected to run a full professional cricket team, which is a squad of around 20, and a staff.
“And they were not well-paid when I was there. It’s all very well recommending the hiring of all these people but the budget needs to be provided.
“The financing of cricket in Scotland is weak compared to other sports like football and rugby.
“During the pandemic Cricket Scotland had to make four people redundant, the office isn’t permanently open because there aren’t enough staff.
“I don’t disagree with the recommendations of the report which has been sanctioned by sportscotland but the resources are not there to do it.
“If sportscotland doesn’t step up to the plate then who is going to do it?”
Aberdeenshire read to address concerns
At a local level Donald and the Aberdeenshire committee are already considering how they can address any concerns members may have.
He said: “In Aberdeen we have a great Asian community which plays cricket and is involved in the game.
“I’ve already spoken to the committee about how we will deal with concerns this might raise in our club.
“Bob Buchan is our diversity coordinator and in January we decided to rewrite our code of conduct because we felt it was quite weak.
“We also had our vision set out in 2019 saying we would be an open, diverse and welcoming club.
“And I’d like to think we are a welcoming club, we’re very proud of all the Asians who are part of our club and we’ve also launched a women’s team.
“If there are any issues then our members should come forward immediately.
“I’m concerned that we’ll lose people to the game because they’ll be impacted by this.”
