File photo of Farokh Engineer.
With England cricket mired in the ugly side of the game of racism recently with Ollie Robinson being exposed of making racial tweets in his teens, another case of a current English cricketer also came to light of doing the same in the past.
And if Indian great Farokh Engineer is to be believed, racism in England cricket dates back to the 90's and he had to face it to. The 83-year-old former wicket-keeper, who played for Lancashire from 1959 to 1968, recalled how he faced casual racism during his time there.
"When I first came into county cricket, there were question marks like 'he is from India?' I did face it (racist comments) once or twice when I joined Lancashire. Nothing very personal, but just because I was from India. It had to do with making fun of my accent," Engineer told The Indian Express.
"I think my English is better than most Englishmen really, so soon they realised that you don’t mess around with Farokh Engineer. They got the message. I gave it back to them straight away. Not only that, I proved myself with my bat and gloves as well. I was simply proud I put India on the map as an ambassador for the country."
Engineer, who played his last Test in 1975, felt that they were always 'bloody Indians' to the Englishman but the behaviour changed for good once the IPL started.
"We were all ‘bloody Indians’ to them till a few years ago. Now once the IPL started, they are all licking our backsides. It amazes me that just because of the money, they are licking our boots now. But people like me know what their true colours were initially. Now they suddenly changed their tunes. India is a good country to go for a few months and do some television work, if not play and make money," Engineer had said on the podcast.
