Richardson believes tournaments like the IPL has brought cultures closer

The cricketing world has not been left behind in its reaction to the social uprising against racial discrimination. Jason Holder, the West Indian captain hinted that his team might display support to the Black lives matter campaign by “taking the knee” during their upcoming test series against England. Elsewhere, England cricketers Michael Carberry and James Anderson have spoken up on the racial bias that exists even in sports.

Despite the unfortunate permeation of bias based on skin color into the sports, the past decade which has seen the rise of T20 leagues the world over, and the subsequent blending of cultures has lead to a better acceptance of diversity. That is the view of Australia and RCB fast bowler, Kane Richardson. "If you are willing and able to talk, and most importantly listen, you can learn a lot about different people. It's a pretty multicultural game, think the IPL has opened a lot of doors, you just learn about so many different people and cultures. Guys you'd just play against now you call teammates for a couple of months a year. You learn about everyone's life stories, that can only be a good thing, and it's probably brought a lot of people together. That's the beauty of sport in general, you just learn how different races and walks of life go about it," said Richardson, who himself has adopted a vegan lifestyle.

However, just being in a diverse dressing room is not enough, and it takes effort on the part of individuals to get to know their teammates better and understand their cultures, to get rid of racial bias. "There's so much downtime in the IPL, even sitting next to someone on a plane. Even in the Australian team, you can learn a lot about someone by sitting next to them on a couple of hour plane flight. It's up to an individual whether they want to get to know someone and put that time in," Richardson said.

Richardson, who was bought by RCB for the 2020 season of the IPL looks forward to cricket in whatever form it resumes. "It's going to be the IPL behind the World Cup. If it clashes with the start of the domestic summer, then that's up for debate and above us players on what decision will be made. But I guess we'll just wait and see on the World Cup and if that does get postponed and the IPL can take that slot, then a lot of guys will be keen to play in that. But I've read a lot of commentary around a lot of past players saying that maybe it's better if we stay back here and play in Australia. So there's probably no wrong answer as long as we're playing cricket, everyone is keen on doing that right now," he added.

[Cricbuzz inputs]