England Wrong On Joe Clarke

Today Geoffrey Bunting returns to TFT with some strong views about Joe Clarke’s inclusion on England’s Covid standby list for the series against the West Indies.

In early February, reports revealed that Joe Clarke is among the Covid reserves for the test series against the West Indies that starts on the 8th March. It emerged on the back of news that the ECB omitted James Anderson and Stuart Broad from the tour – possibly in the hope it would pass under the radar. Cricket journalists obliged with reports celebrating that England’s “best uncapped player” was being considered for selection.

When the ECB is keen to present itself as a diverse and inclusive organisation, including Clarke appears to fly in the face of the optics the ECB has attempted to manufacture. In particular, around the women’s game and attracting a more diverse audience.

For context, it emerged during Alex Hepburn’s 2019 rape trial that he and then teammates, Clarke and Tom Kohler-Cadmore, frequently exchanged what Nick Friend diplomatically branded, “disrespectful comments.” In reality it was as Judge Jim Tindal describeda “pathetic, sexist” conversation which allegedly included jokes about rape, and treated sex as a competition in which women were the game pieces. Hepburn was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. For their part, the ECB blacklisted Clarke and Kohler Cadmore. A moratorium that appears to have ended.

But for light summaries, it is a context journalists ignored for many pieces on Clarke’s selection. When confronted with Clarke’s claim that Hepburn is still his best friendone flippantly replied, “That was three years ago.”

It is a remarkable failure in reportage. One that contributes to the sense of wilful apathy among cricket journalists to the effect a player has on their audience. We are quick to celebrate inspiration – such as how many young girls took up the sport when England won the World Cup in 2017 – but apparently unwilling to highlight the power players have to drive people away.

If the ECB is serious about diversifying participation in the game, that women have commented that Clarke’s inclusion made them “cry from pure anger” or that the ECB is “basically spitting in the face of all the women he degraded” should cause alarm. Instead , these concerns have been largely ignored.

Male pundits and fans are quick to remind us that cricket isn’t about nice people. That teams are composed of different, and often conflicting, personalities.

But this isn’t about a player interrupting the culture of a team; or being self-involved to the point of disruption like Kevin Pietersen. This is about a man who played an active role in a catalogue of behaviours that led to the sexual assault of a woman; who empowered that outcome by maintaining that women are objects in a game. Men fail to understand that what Clarke and Kohler-Cadmore did is a violence in itself. One for which Clarke has failed to express enough meaningful contrition – neither growing or even distancing himself from the rapist.

For all its talk of inclusivity, the ECB maintains a sport that remains dominated by men and exclusionary because of it. When it welcomes men like Clarke into the fold, it sends, as one Twitter user put it to me, a simple message to women : that “victims of sexual assault don’t matter, and that anything that happened to us or anyone else is okay.” At a time when it is already failing to give women adequate facilities, prioritise the women’s gameor sanction those that fail their female cricketers. That doesn’t look inclusive to me.

When we fail to contextualise violence, we empower those who view it as an aberrant and solely physical act, rather than a systematic tool that continues to be deployed against women in cricket and beyond. (Which doesn’t even touch on how much worse it can be for trans and non-binary cricketers in a pointedly binary sport). As neuroscientist, Dr R. Douglas Fields, points out“Viewing violence narrowly from the perspective of psychological dysfunction shirks the larger truth that the biological roots of rage exist in all of us.”

It is a viewpoint many men don’t want to entertain. Suggesting that cricketers and their personal lives should be separated. Or, as many put it, that cricket should be separated from “politics.” But this is an excuse – used to reject perspectives that don’t align to a highly specific worldview. A claim that we don’t need to look beyond the facades on our TV screens, because to do so we might have to confront our own attitudes towards women; the violence that Dr Fields highlights are in all of us.

Failure to contextualise Clarke’s consideration for selection effectively throws into sharp relief how the game of cricket accepts and protects violence against women. Clarke, remember, hasn’t exactly lacked for work, no matter how much men like to claim he’s been punished enough or, worse, that he did nothing wrong. He’s travelled the world: playing for Perth Scorchers, Karachi Kings, and the Melbourne Stars. When users raised concerns about Clarke on Twitter, the Stars hid the comments because protecting violence is truly a global custom.

Women feel abandoned by cricket journalists, one woman told me. They’ve “let themselves down with this issue and it’s been a shame to see. We need representing too, they’ve turned their backs on us.” But as Clarke’s story shows , this isn’t just about journalists. These men are everywhere. They’re in the media, they’re agents, coaches, executives – they run the game.

As much as the ECB wants to portray itself as inclusive, it has been shown up in the last year alone by the testimony of Azeem Rafiqby Ollie Robinsonand now by its willingness to ignore women on Joe Clarke.

This isn’t an accident. It’s part of a system that at once claims to welcome everyone, but seems to maintain prejudice against anyone who isn’t white, straight, and male; and refuses change in favour of low-effort and meaningless optics. It’s part of a system that welcomes a player like Joe Clarke despite how unsafe he makes women feel. It is part of a system that fails to listen. And when women tell you they feel unsafe around a man – and I don’t care how good you think they are at their job – you bloody well listen.

Geoffrey Bunting

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