The biggest sin of English cricket was the abolition of the talent factory for young black players.

Michael Carberry was a talented batsman who deserved better treatment. Photo: Getty Images/Greg Wood

Lord's moment of silence before the start of the second Test between England and Australia would be appropriate: to celebrate all the careers of non-white cricketers who have been wasted in the UK.

Michael Carberry set off to Australia in 2013-14, after one test appearance, as Alastair Cook's first partner. In the warm-up against Australia A, they both scored 150 points. In a series dominated by Mitchell Johnson, Carberry scored more points than Cook, more than any other England player except Kevin Pietersen, who scored just 13 points more.

However, the last English-born black player was the only batsman on that tour to never again be selected for the Test for England. Ten years later, England have not found a batsman to replace Cooke and Sir Andrew Strauss. Since then, they've tried a dozen test rookies, all of whom were given better chances than the 33-year-old Carberry, who was on Johnson's pace: he only pulled out of his last innings because he attempted to land an uppercut after all the other batsmen had were blown away from the other end.

Carberry was to be selected for the one-night series that followed as a batsman in home white ball cricket, but was again not given a chance. In 2020, Carberry spoke out against the locker room culture he was facing. «Black people are not important to the structure of English cricket,» he said, retiring prematurely after growing tired of being seen as an «evil black man.»

Overall, the Independent Cricket Fairness Commission's report on all forms of discrimination in English cricket is insightful and balanced, not a bombastic tirade. A conclusion such as this seems undeniable: «3.8.11 Historically established elites have consistently restricted access to the game to the working class, women, and players from ethnically diverse communities.»

(left to right) Contributors Michelle Moore, Sir Brendan Barber, Cindy Butts (Chair), Dr Michael Collins and Zafar Ansari. Photo: PA/Josimar Senior. Haringey Cricket College closes. It has been called «the most successful sports academy in the world» by the UK Sports Council, with 33 Caribbean-born cricketers by the mid-1990s and 15 Haringa alumni.

And yet he was allowed to die out of sheer meanness, pettiness, and, one might argue, racism. By 2021, the proportion of Asian and black county cricketers combined had dropped to 8.1 percent. Haringey wasn't just a place to play cricket: all students got NVQs because inspirational head coach Reg Scarlett insisted on it. He never received lottery money. And the amount he received from the governing body of our game was also zero.

However, it would only take around £25,000 to prevent the college from closing in 1997. Scarlett left, but former West Indies player Derick Murray received a relatively modest salary of £25,000. But nobody wanted to know. And that's the gist, the relationship of traditional English cricket to non-white cricketers in a nutshell.

We don't mind if you go out and play cricket among yourselves — and if you find a really fast bowler, we might as well choose him — but otherwise don't bother us. The game of cricket itself has been betrayed, or at least wasted, during all these decades of them and us. All it would take is one invitation from the local major league to the local non-white league to play in the annual game as the first bridge between communities.

Every first-class county should now look back and ask themselves if we did what we could have done for non-white cricket in our county, and not in the last five minutes when it suddenly became fashionable to «get through» but over the past five decades. I suspect that none of them can begin to say yes. Therefore, a moment of silence with the Lord is appropriate.

Commission recommends abolishing school/club nominations and replacing them with open trials; that districts should devote more resources to identifying talent in public schools; creating affordable T20 competitions for public school boys and girls under 14 and under 15 funded by canceling tours and early childhood festivals that favor those in fee-paying schools.

So much to do, but huge sums need not be involved. That would not be an acceptable excuse.