Monte Lynch: "Racist notes were slipped under my hotel door"

HUW TURBERVILL speaks to the former England, Surrey and Gloucestershire batsman for a Facing Up interview in the October edition of The Cricketer magazine

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• Keith Barker: I first experienced racist abuse on a sports field when I was nine years old

Monte Lynch has become the latest cricketer to allege that he has been the victim of racism in the county game.

The former Surrey and England batsman is keeping the names of his alleged persecutors close to his chest before he brings out a book next summer.

In a wide-ranging interview in the October issue of The Cricketer magazine, however, he outlines a number of events that took place over several years in the 1980s, following his move to the UK from a childhood in Guyana.

“People keep asking why I haven’t said anything but it will be in a book I plan to bring out next summer. It will cause a stir. It will say it all.

“Sky asked me on with Ebony Rainford-Brent and Michael Holding, but I did not want to air my views nor reveal what happened to me on TV.

“Racist notes were slipped under my hotel door. My coffin was filed with orange juice and milk.

“Years later former players hugged me, and said that they wished they had done something to help me. There were lots of issues.

“At Headingley when I played the ODI [one of three for England, all against West Indies, in 1988] three Yorkshiremen walked past and said: ‘We are going to give you black ——- a good ——ing hiding tomorrow.’ We were often called ‘chocs’ and referred to as ‘you lot’.”

^{Monte Lynch represented Surrey and Gloucestershire during his 21-year professional career}

The Cricketer has been told off the record which fellow cricketers were involved and what was alleged to have been said and done to Lynch, and the stories are shocking.

He is the latest cricketer to bring such grisly memories to the surface.

Yorkshire have begun an investigation into allegations of ‘institutional racism’ and a review of the club’s culture after Azeem Rafiq said his experiences at Headingley left him close to taking his own life.

Glamorgan have also been accused of institutional racism by a former player, Mohsin Arif.

And Essex captain Tom Westley apologised after Feroze Khushi, a Muslim, had beer poured over him during their Bob Willis Trophy celebrations at Lord’s.

Elsewhere in the October magazine, Philip Collins, who was Tony Blair’s chief speech writer and a columnist on The Times, dares to be the lone voice that argues that Zak Crawley’s 267 in the third Test against Pakistan at the Ageas Bowl might not be what it seems. 

He writes: “Sometimes a player who is destined to average 35 or under will score a double-hundred: Jason Gillespie, Rob Key, Wasim Akram, Faoud Bacchus, Wavell Hinds, Sherwin Campbell, Guy Whittall, Greg Blewett, Lou Vincent and Jason Holder are testimony to the fact that it happens.”

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