Cricket is racist?

Pesky that the great majority of cricket enthusiasts are brown.  Cricket is sometimes said to be India's only national religion

Through all his incarnations, Doctor Who has fought selflessly to ensure the survival of all manner of life forms across the Universe.  But now an international group of academics has branded the heroic Time Lord ‘thunderingly racist’.

The Doctor’s new foes claim that his dismissive attitude towards black companions, his contempt  for ‘primitive’ people, and even his passion for cricket are all proof of a reactionary ‘whiteness’ pervading his adventures.

Their concerns are published in a new book, Doctor Who And Race, which says the BBC programme is based in attitudes ‘that continue to subjugate people of colour’.

One of the more bizarre theories  is offered by Amit Gupta, an American professor, who argues that Peter Davison’s cricket-loving incarnation of the character in the Eighties was thinly disguised nostalgia for the British Empire. He wrote: ‘[He]  portrayed the amateur English cricketer of the late 19th Century when the game was characterised by both racial and class distinctions.

‘Cricket also had a role in maintaining the status of British imperialism through the exercise of soft power as it was successfully inculcated by the colonial elites. Davison’s cricketing Doctor once again saw the BBC using Who to promote a racial and class nostalgia that had already outlived its validity.’

And the BBC said: ‘Doctor Who has a strong track record of diverse casting among both regular and guest cast. Freema Agyeman became the first black companion and Noel Clarke starred in a major role for five years [Mickey Smith].

‘Reflecting the diversity of the UK is a duty of the BBC, and casting on Doctor Who is colour-blind. It is always about the best actors for the roles.’

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