Our sporting codes are fast becoming more open and more liberal. Football has its anti-bigotry drives; rugby has Gareth Thomas. But cricket is oddly reticent. When Steven Davies came out in 2011, he was the first professional to do so. This brave and admirable decision—”If I can just help one person to deal with their sexuality, then that’s all I care about”—was met with a rampart of silence. He has not played for England since. True, he suffered little or none of the abuse levelled at Thomas, and he is considerably less famous in his sport than was Thomas in his. It is also true that rugby is a “manlier” game than cricket (at least to those who find their manhood in grunting noises and excessive physical contact). Even so, the silence is well-nigh conspiratorial. When Steve Waugh was asked how he would respond, as captain, to the revelation of a gay player in the Australian dressing room, he gave the most awkward answer I have ever heard him give. This is curious. Cricket, notoriously, is “a gentleman’s game.” It ought, if anything, to be at the forefront in these matters. It is difficult to believe that Davies is an outlier; more likely there are and have been scores like him, afraid of egression from the cricketing closet. Keith Booth has made defensible inferencesabout George Lohmann, and some of what Cardus wrote about Ted McDonald would erect an eyebrow today. But the literature of the game touches only obliquely on the subject, if it touches on it at all. The main achievement, then, of Burning Ashes—its only achievement—could be to break a silence that is calcifying into a taboo.



