The new head of the ECB: Banter is a curse and is unacceptable in locker rooms

Richard Gould says that teams should be under no illusions about the required standards. Credit: AFP via Getty Images/Tolga Akmen

“Banter” will now be considered a swear word in the locker rooms, and players have been warned against using offensive language under the guise of a fool following the Yorkshire racism scandal.

Richard Gould, the new chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, said the players have no excuse for not understanding the expected standards of behaviour. This comes as the game prepares for what is expected to be a scathing report on historical discrimination to be released by the Independent Cricket Equality Commission shortly.

An overview of the game's dressing room culture is all male and the women's professional teams were completed over the winter — delivered by EY Lane 4 business management consultants, and the men's test team was the last to receive online training during a tour of Pakistan.

Cricketers from minority communities have complained in the past of racist slurs disguised as jokes and players have been warned about what to expect from the authorities if they cross the line.

“Various troubles in Yorkshire are back 20 years ago . When you go back, the behavior was different for a long time. We strive as a society to improve from year to year. The elements seen and heard in Yorkshire were not entirely a Yorkshire issue or entirely a cricket issue. We saw that in the dressing rooms, banter was the word you could use. Bunter is now a dirty word. This is unacceptable,” Gould said.

“We are not going to release one size for everyone; This is what a dressing room should look like. It's the team's responsibility, it's their job, and they've been given all the tools to understand what we need from the game. No one can have any illusions about the standards required now. Now they know what the baseline is, what is acceptable and what is not.”