How well do the cricket teams represent their country?

[zhivago]

I want to know your opinions on whether the cricket teams truly reflect their country's demography, or are they skewed in favour of only a few ethnicities. The reasons that the unrepresented ethnicities are not well represented can be combination of
A) not interested in cricket,
B) are too socially backward,
C) are discriminated against by others,
D) any other reasons.

Pakistani team: Dominated by punjabis, pathans, urdu speakers in that order but sindhis and balochis missing.

Indian team: Dominated by upper caste hindus, good representation of muslims and sikhs, but no dalits or backward castes.

English team: Whites, browns and very few blacks. I think the most diverse team right now along with South Africa.

South African team: Blacks were rare in the pre-quota days. Now, most communities well represented without any dent in cricketing talent.

Sri Lankan team: Mostly Sinhalese, only one Tamil ( Murali)

Australian team: I think Gillespie was the first native.

Bangladesh: Minority hindus represented ( Kapali and one wicketkeeper who defected to ICL, come to my mind)

This might have errors, but the basic point stands that certains ethnicities are not well represented in some teams.

I agree that ideally, the best 11 should represent the country. But if those best 11 are only from a few ethnicities, then there is something wrong somewhere. If so, what are the reasons in your opinion?

[cricketworm]

Blame our power hungry idiot ancestors ... made stupid rules and 'other stuff' ... i don't want to mention on this forum. Speaking of India, I don't think upper cast and lower cast thing exist anymore, regionalism might do. And TBH, outside of cricket, Govn't has made lots of rules for dalits, because of that middle/lower class, who are upper cast are suffering a lot in jobs, education, income etc. Lots of reservation for them, which is equally wrong!

In short, It's stupid and bias. We need reform! This is 2011.

[Fawad2010]

Culture and environment plays a part in it as well, for example I would understand if people in the desert or extreme cold conditions do not play cricket as much as people living in moderate weather areas.

[ali85]

There is no bias against sindhi or Baluchi players - if they are good enough to represent, they will make it to International levels - or do you suggest we give them a free pass?

Perhaps take out Afridi and Umar Akmal and replace them with Sindhi and Baluchi talents? If Baluchi or Sindhi players want to make it big, they have to follow their dreams and move to big cities - Peshawar, Karachi, Lahore to hone their talents by playing good teams in domestic circuit. Enough rural Canadians migrate to big cities to earn more money...

[zhivago]

Originally Posted by ali85 There is no bias against sindhi or Baluchi players - if they are good enough to represent, they will make it to International levels - or do you suggest we give them a free pass? Perhaps take out Afridi and Umar Akmal and replace them with Sindhi and Baluchi talents? If Baluchi or Sindhi players want to make it big, they have to follow their dreams and move to big cities - Peshawar, Karachi, Lahore to hone their talents by playing good teams in domestic circuit. Enough rural Canadians migrate to big cities to earn more money...

Why getting belligerent?
So I get that the point you are making is that it is more to do with which place you are from, rather than your ethnicity. Definitely a valid point. I am not saying there is ONE SINGLE reason for the lack of representation.

But not sure why when everyone migrated to the big cities, and the Sindhis and Baluchis did not. And if they did why couldn't they make it to the cricket team.

[ftbno1]

Well i can tell you for a fact that our first WC winning captain was a dalit.Kapil Dev Nikhanj

[zhivago]

Was not aware of that. Can you give any source or an explanation?

I found conflicting results, some claiming that he is a Jat, same as Sehwag, while one source claimed that he belongs to the carpenter class, which means Nikhanj. Yet other sources claimed that he is from trader community.

As far as I know, neither of these is a dalit.

If he indeed is a dalit, it seems he slipped under the radar.

Anyway, given that dalits were 16% in 2001 in India, they are still poorly represented.

Coming back to my main question. How well do you think the Indian team represents your country?

[cricmylife]

I think the talent can not be hidden for long. As someone brought up earlier that to advance in cricket Pakistan, players must move to bigger cities. Well, not true! We all know Azeem Ghuman and he represented Hyderabad, Sindh team..

[cricketworm]

Currently, I don't think there is such an issue anymore in indian cricket, only issue is ... there has been blunders by selectors thanks to regionalism. Few players have been selected because they are from typical place or coaching place.

Nowadays, you score tons of runs in Ranji, and if you are young, you will be most likely get selected. Pujara, Rahane, Mukund, Jadeja etc.

If you can bowl with fast pace you will jump ahead despite whatever your Ranji performance is Yadav, Aaron, Ishant etc.

If you have perform well in IPL you can get jump as well Rahul Sharma etc.

So, I really doubt that this thing exist anymore ...

[RWAC]

OP, I can't say much about other sides but I can definitely comment on the Indian team.

If (and it's a big IF) such a pattern occurs in the Indian team that there are more upper-caste players, then it has to do mostly with access to facilities/presence in big cities.

If you look at most of the upper-caste players in the Indian team, most of them came from big cities and/or from middle/upper class (economic) families. Yes, there are plenty of poor upper castes, who are as meagerly represented as the poor lower castes in the cricket team. Heck, even most of the Muslims and Sikhs (ex. Pataudi, Sidhu etc.) that have represented India have been from comparatively well-to-do backgrounds.

It all comes (or came) down to:

1. Access to facilities; also helps with networking
2. if you were living in a big city where you could get noticed again
3. if your family was not in such poor economic condition that they couldn't afford to lose one potential earning hand to a gamble (yes it was a gamble to devote your life to cricket).

I can safely say there was never any planned prejudice against lower castes or any other classes/ethnicities. However, when it comes to regionalism and selectors favoring players from their regions...

PS: That's one of the reasons I support the IPL. It has taken the gamble out of devoting your life to cricket to an extent. Before a person could "waste" all their life playing Ranji/domestic with the hope of making it big and barely earn enough. I personally know of a few kids were discouraged by their parents for this exact reason. IPL has at least made cricket a financially viable career option. With that, you should see players coming up from smaller cities/lower strata of society.

[dinakar]

Originally Posted by zhivago Coming back to my main question. How well do you think the Indian team represents your country?

Improved well in the last 15 years I would say. Cricket was an urban game in India for a long time and only in the 80s it reached to the villages. Naturally team had dominated by the urban upper-middle class youths with odd exceptions. It was like that being upper caste wasn't enough, but you needed to be from a 'big' (I mean influential) family back ground as well to get in to the team. These days players from the interior villages and backward communities getting attention quite well and hard for the selectors to keep away the talents for their favorites, not saying it reached the perfect level but far better than some 15 years ago. Dalits haven't much representation yet but eventually their time will come soon. Just like the native south africans, they have started cricket late and will take a bit time to catch up the gap. Picking up someone just for the sake of representation will not him anyways.

[Bashira_taeli]

Originally Posted by ali85 There is no bias against sindhi or Baluchi players - if they are good enough to represent, they will make it to International levels - or do you suggest we give them a free pass? Perhaps take out Afridi and Umar Akmal and replace them with Sindhi and Baluchi talents? If Baluchi or Sindhi players want to make it big, they have to follow their dreams and move to big cities - Peshawar, Karachi, Lahore to hone their talents by playing good teams in domestic circuit. Enough rural Canadians migrate to big cities to earn more money...

I agree with this.

Sindhis, Balochis and people from Gilgit Baltistan arent that interested in cricket. Whereas in Punjab, KP and amongst urdu speakers it has become part of the culture.

Our domestic cricket I think provides a good enough opportunity to folks from all over the country as it consists of regional teams. Any player from Sndh, Balochistan etc who performs will be noticed. Having said that PCB needs to work on the cricket infrastructure in these areas, although the infrastructure is not that great any where in the country.