By his own account, Farage “grew up playing [cricket] as a kid” and “continued through to my mid-to-late teens”. The men and women who run the sport and finally started to realise the truth of what Mike Marqusee said back in 1998, when he wrote that British Asian cricket “represents an immense potential resource for English cricket, provided that English cricket is prepared to redefine its notions about what constitutes ‘Englishness’”. English cricket has been wrestling with this since 1896, when the selectors were split over whether or not Kumar Ranjitsinhji was eligible for the Test team. On the ground around the country, the different communities of British cricket sometimes seem to mix as well as oil and water. “The multiculturalism project has failed,” wrote Farage last January.

Source: The Guardian November 16, 2016 16:20 UTC