Ross Taylor highlights racial insensitivity in New Zealand cricket

Former Blacks star Ross Taylor has opened up on racial “insensitivity” in the Kiwi game and called on New Zealand Cricket to “put more resources into the Polynesian community”.

Proud Samoan Taylor looks at the issue in his new autobiography Ross Taylor Black & White.

“Cricket in New Zealand is a pretty white sport. For much of my career I’ve been an anomaly, a brown face in a vanilla line-up. That has its challenges, many of which aren’t readily apparent to your teammates or the cricketing public,” Taylor said, revealing people assumed he was Maori or Indian.

He found himself in tricky situations in team environments.

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“In many ways, dressing-room banter is the barometer. A teammate used to tell me, ‘You’re half a good guy, Ross, but which half is good? You don’t know what I’m referring to’. I was pretty sure I did.

“Other players also had to put up with comments that dwelt on their ethnicity. In all probability, a Pakeha listening to those sorts of comments would think, ‘Oh, that’s okay, it’s just a bit of banter’.

“But he’s hearing it as white person, and it’s not directed at people like him. So, there’s no pushback; no one corrects them.

“Then the onus falls on the targets. You wonder if you should pull them up but worry that you’ll create a bigger problem or be accused of playing the race card by inflating harmless banter into racism. It’s easier to develop a thick skin and let it slide, but is that the right thing to do?”

Taylor noted the New Zealand team management had also unwittingly touched a nerve.

“Not long after Mike ‘Roman’ Sandle became Black Caps manager, he said to Victoria (Taylor’s wife) that, when he was manager of the Blues rugby team, he’d observed that the Māori and Island boys struggled with managing money, ‘so if Ross wants to talk about it …’

“Victoria laughed it off, and it probably didn’t take Mike long to realise that, however well-meaning, he’d been a bit hasty in his assumptions.

“When I came back into the team after the captaincy drama, I found myself sitting next to (coach) Mike Hesson in the Koru Lounge at Dunedin Airport. He’d come straight from his house. ‘My cleaner’s Samoan,’ he said. ‘She’s a lovely lady, hard-working, very trustworthy’. All I could say was, ‘Oh, cool’.

“I have no doubt that Roman and Hess and the guys who engaged in the ‘banter’ would be dismayed to learn that their remarks landed with a thud.

“Let me be clear: I don’t think for one minute that they were coming from a racist perspective. I think they were insensitive and lacked the imagination and empathy to put themselves in the other person’s shoes.

“What to them is a bit of harmless banter is actually confronting for the targets because it tells them they’re seen as being different. Instead of the message being, ‘You’re one of us, mate,’ it is, in effect, ‘You’re one of them’.”

Taylor noted that former All Black and league star Sonny Bill Williams felt young Māori and Pasifika who were held back by a lack of confidence and their personal circumstances, and therefore didn’t fulfil their potential.

“I know from personal experience how true that is,” Taylor wrote.

“I’d hope that one of the takeaways from my career is that good cricketers can emerge from a Polynesian background.”

He admitted cricket gear could be expensive compared to other sports “which probably puts some Polynesian parents off the game”.

“But maybe New Zealand Cricket should be putting more resources into the Polynesian community because there must be more where I came from.”

New Zealand Cricket have been approached for comment.