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

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Too late for me, I thought. Always be this way for me. Caged, enraged. But what should I tell my son? Things have changed. Things have improved. He is unlikely to experience racism in the same way I had when I was growing up. So how do I prepare him without infecting him?

For me, sport had always been a great leveller. Something that brought me solace, an escape in times of trouble.

It was how my father, Keith, and I bonded. Before I could grip a mug, my father had already shoved a cricket bat and ball in my hands. We would go into our 30-foot back garden and play, my father bowling, me batting. He’d always bowl googlies at me, a deceptive delivery where the ball spins into the batsmen’s legs instead of going straight. A magic trick. As my father watched me swing wildly, and miss, his shifty eyes would tighten, and his soft, narrow, light-brown face would break into a cheeky smile before he’d launch into a story about ‘back home’ – in Jamaica. My father’s yearning for Jamaica and the role cricket played in transporting him ‘back home’, albeit for brief moments, made me recognise that sport was more than a game.