Richard Gould, the newly appointed chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). He has said that dressing room banter will no longer be considered acceptable behavior and will instead be considered ‘abuse’. He also clarified that teams will have to re-evaluate their culture to determine what is and is not acceptable behavior in the dressing room.
Richard Gould said as quoted ‘Guardian’ –
“We have seen within dressing rooms, banter used to be a word that you could use. But banter is a swear word now. Banter is not acceptable. It’s up to the teams to ensure they have their own correct levels of control and to determine their culture. But they know the base level of what is and isn’t acceptable.”
Former England captain Andrew Strauss had also spoken on similar lines recently, urging cricketers to avoid dressing room banter bordering on racial harassment and bullying in order to avert controversies like the Azeem Rafiq fiasco.
Rafiq saw six former cricketers being found guilty dressing room –
The Pakistan-born Rafiq, who played for county side Yorkshire for almost a decade, had told UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) in November 2021 that racist comments and actions by fellow cricketers had left him “close to taking his own life”. Rafiq’s testimony saw six former Yorkshire cricketers being found guilty of using racist language in the dressing room.
