Читать книгу No Win Race. A Story of Belonging, Britishness and Sport онлайн

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I didn’t know about the Virk brothers, the Ramsey family, Akhtar Ali Baig, Kennith Singh, the Toussaint brothers.ssss1 They were the victims or survivors with no names. The sources of rumours that were in fact a reality.

No freedom. That’s what it meant for me. My parents had clearly been aware of the challenges in Newham, so they essentially locked me in the house during the evenings and in the holidays.

During the summer of 1980, I watched England fail miserably at the European football championships in Italy. My only memories were of Ray Wilkins lobbing two defenders and then casually lifting the ball over the goalkeeper in England’s draw against Belgium and the tear gas used by police to restrain English football hooligans. Crowd violence would be the norm in English football through the eighties.

I saw my first live sports event that summer, when my father took me to Lord’s to watch the second Test between West Indies and England. West Indies’ opening batsman Desmond Haynes hit his highest Test score in that game with 184, while Viv Richards won man of the match for a typically destructive 145.