When quota is fair game

When Temba Bavuma’s team was crowned the world champions of Test cricket on June 14 at the Lord’s cricket ground in England, my mind raced back to a very poignant and moving moment two and a half decades back. I was interviewing Gerald Majola, the then CEO of Cricket South Africa, in Johannesburg. Among my many trips to the cricketing world that sports reporting had privileged me with, South Africa was the one country where wounds of the past, its festering nature, efforts to heal them and resistance to change, were all playing out simultaneously. Much like it does in India.

The moment the chief executive of the South African cricket administration started describing the trauma that apartheid and segregation had inflicted on his black race, I saw tears rolling down his cheeks. It is rare to see an adult sob and my eyes too became wet.

South Africa is a country rich in its diversity and dreadful in the ways and manner in which race was used to exploit and discriminate against the majority for the benefit of a privileged few. It was a country where black Africans were literally treated like outcasts till the white regime was forced to give up power in 1994, when Nelson Mandela became the trigger and symbol of that transition. That transfer of power ushered in many changes that were introduced to empower black Africans, and one of them was making it mandatory to have black representation in the domestic and national cricket teams. It is called the “quota system”, where at present you have to include at least two black and four people of colour in the national team, with minor tweaks here and there.

When Majola broke down in that interview in 2002, the quota system was shaking the white-created edifice of the game and causing upheavals in the team. Makhaya Ntini, one of the best fast bowlers ever to play for South Africa, was the first black cricketer chosen to play for the team. He was to reveal later that he was never accepted by the white members of the team, shunned and made to feel unwanted. Many other players faced similar treatment. They were derided for being in the team not because of merit but as “quota” players.

The administrators never budged and today that transition seems to have harvested a positive result that, as Bavuma said in his post- match speech, should “unite a divided country”. The Rainbow Nation, as South Africa is called, has shown the world that national integration can be achieved through sports and quota system can in the long run blur the line between what we in India call “reservation” and “merit”.

From an Indian perspective, the black people of South Africa were for whites what Dalits are to upper castes. To be shunned and discriminated against. The majority of Indian cricket fans, who celebrated South Africa’s triumph over Australia, are probably not aware that it is the much maligned “reservations” which helped reflect the true diversity of a country with a traumatic, divisive history. While today black Africans have representation in the South African team, it is sad to realise that one will have to use a toothcomb to find a Dalit and a tribal player who have represented India ever since its cricketing history began. Palwankar Baloo pre-1947 and Vinod Kambli in the 1990s are the two well-known names from the Dalit community that come to mind. There may be a few more. Since it is difficult to establish their caste identity, one is refraining from naming them here. That is all for a population of nearly 25 per cent in the country’s most popular sport! Forget the South African quota system, have we like them introduced grassroot training/scholarship programmes to address the lack of access and facilities in the sport?

Our apathy to discuss caste in sport and address the elephant in the room makes us complicit in a discriminatory system that deprives one-fourth of our population a proper representation in a sport we call our religion. A sport that unites 1.4 billion people has no Dalit player ‘with merit’ to play for India. Does a cricket board flush with billions of rupees not have the responsibility and even moral obligation to find the reasons for this imbalance in the team composition? What a shame!

Sports thrives on excellence. It needs hard work, proper training, resources and, above all, a fair support system that allows a free expression of one’s talent.

Notwithstanding the South African experiment, reservation in sports may be an extreme step that could affect team performance if the player is not good enough. That does not absolve India from introspecting why a major chunk of its population is absent from the national team. After all, what is privilege worth if it does not realise that “merit” in an unjust society without equal access to resources is a sham.

— The writer is the author of ‘Not Quite Cricket’ and ‘Not Just Cricket’