‘Deeply flawed’ – Report finding racial criticism of Cricket Scotland
The Changing the Boundaries report, published last July, was produced by consultancy Plan4Sport on behalf of Sportscotland following allegations of racism in football by two former Scottish players, Majid Haq and Qasim Sheikh.
The report defined 448 cases of suspected institutional racism and, on the eve of its release, sparked the mass resignation of the Cricket Scotland board, which Brian had resigned from a few months earlier due to ill health.
However, the former chairman believes that the report and the way the inquiry was conducted were not independent and comprehensive enough and anticipated the existence of a racism problem in Scottish cricket.
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Brian believes the results have unnecessarily thrown the sport into crisis and has called for a re-examination of the report and its conduct in the hope that Cricket Scotland can be relieved of the special measures imposed on it by Sportscotland and ultimately that the label, being an “institutional racist” organization is being brushed aside.
He said: “We now know that Sportscotland’s so-called ‘independent’ report was flawed from the start and represented a gross waste of large amounts of public money.
“The results of the freedom of information requests and in-depth analysis of the report and its methodology now clearly show that it was a deeply flawed report with a predetermined outcome, prepared by ill-resourced and conflicting reviewers who failed to conduct a proper forensic investigation or even to speak to many relevant people.”
Key points claimed by Brian include:
– Plan4Sport was not independent or impartial. You were an existing service provider to Sportscotland and therefore had a conflict of interest.
– The evaluators failed to interview key individuals – including former head coaches and CEOs – and did not give sufficient weight to the views of those who had provided information that conflicted with the predetermined outcome.
– Cricket Scotland and those criticized in the report have not had an opportunity to verify or challenge the evidence used in the review or the findings of the review, which is contrary to natural justice.
– The so-called 448 examples of breaches of these criteria have not been validated, published or viewed by Cricket Scotland or anyone outside of Plan4sport (including Sportscotland).
