South African Blood, English Heart

Source: images99.com

Although I am slightly late to the controversy, Jack Wilshere’s comments earlier this month about nationality and sporting teams provide an opportunity for me to espouse an opinion I have quietly held for a while but not yet voiced. I am myself not fully sure that it is correct. I am not fully sure it works. But I feel it is worth airing if for nothing more than to play devil’s advocate. Cricket will be my chosen vehicle, it is my sport and the games arena in which the  debate is most heated but the most complex.

It is worth repeating the statement from the Arsenal and England midfielder that provoked so much debate:

“If you’ve lived in England for five years, for me, it doesn’t make you English. You shouldn’t play. It doesn’t mean you can play for that country. If I went to Spain and lived there for five years, I’m not going to play for Spain. For me an English player should play for England really.”

Coverage of the incident increased when England cricketer Kevin Pietersen, never a man to keep his thoughts bottled up inside, responded on Twitter. His was a telling phrase:

“It’s about representing your country! IN ANY SPORT!”

Your country? many would say. You were born in South Africa. You grew up in South Africa. You played for a South African cricket side and even played against England in a tour match. You moved to England when you were twenty years old. You still sound like the kid from Pietermaritzburg. How can you call yourself English?

Pietersen qualifies to play for England team courtesy of a British passport that is his birthright, having been born to an English mother, but he also qualifies on dint of an outstanding natural talent that he felt was never going to be fully expressed in South Africa. Pietersen emigrated to play for Nottinghamshire because he felt the South African quota system was preventing him developing ahead of inferior players. True? Debatable. That he is a true genius in cricketing terms who has earned his place in the national side through runs? Of no doubt. English? Tough to argue.

He is not the only player in the England team who was born out of country but has forced their way in through talent. Of the England side currently beginning their winter tour of Australia, proudly wearing the three lions against the old enemy, Pietersen is one of six: Matt Prior (born in South Africa), Ben Stokes (New Zealand), Boyd Rankin (Ireland), Jonathan Trott (South Africa) and Gary Ballance (Zimbabwe) being the others. Six out of seventeen squad members don’t pass what must surely come to be known as the ‘Wilshere Test’.

But is this fair? Of the six, Trott Pietersen and Prior all have one parent who are English. It is far from unusual for a person to have such a mixed background, particularly amongst members of the Empire where Commonwealth postings, and thus foreign births, were common. Indeed, some of the finest and most English of English cricket captains, Andrew Strauss Colin Cowdrey and even arch-Englishman Douglas Jardine among them, were born outside our shores. The benefits of being victims of a guilty imperial past.

True, this is not the case for the remaining three. But Rankin changed his representation because of the lack of Test match opportunities in his native Ireland and Stokes was moved to England by his family, seeking work, when he was six. The ambition of the Irish fast bowler must be commended and the necessity of the Stokes family in uprooting understood and appreciated.

Making a living is an important part of life. The most important part of life, depending on your outlook. To work is to live and if making a living is your life, then is not England their life? If they are not English in breed or breeding, then they must feel proud and indebted to the country for giving them a chance to live out their dreams of playing cricket at the highest level.

For some, it is more than just opportunities. It is literal life. Fawad Ahmed, the Pakistan-born Australia leg spinner, played his first international match earlier this year for his adopted country. Many will see his début as Antipodean desperation to replace the irreplaceable Shane Warne. Ahmed might just feel glad to be there at all, having fled Pakistan when militant extremists threatened his life for supporting a NGO that championedwomen’s rights. Begrudge a Pietersen or a Trott, who it is easily argued moved for glory, but do not begrudge Fawad.

For me, it is cases such as these that require a new way of looking at nationality. Society is more multi-ethnic and mobile than ever before.  The businessman who moves to New York or Singapore for work and wishes to become CEO is not castigated. The average man-on-the-street who moves overseas for a better life is celebrated rather than scorned. The world is a global village, we are no longer fazed by uprooting our entire lives and setting up somewhere new. National sports teams must reflect this. To me, you belong to a country when you commit to it and contribute positively to it.

The six England players in the Ashes squad all live in England. They play for English clubs (when allowed) and mentor the next generation of national players. They inspire the next next generation to pick up a bat or a ball. More materially, they have bought houses here, pay tax in England, contribute to the local economy. They have married English women and given birth to children with the right to call themselves English. They contribute to English society and have committed their future to the English cause.

Not English? Then we’re looking at English the wrong way.