Earlier this year I was commissioned by Open Minds Theatre Company to produce, on behalf of Rotherham Football Club and the “Let’s Kick Racism Out Of Football” campaign, a short documentary investigating race issues in football.
Taking up the task with producer Steve Rogers, it didn’t take much digging to discover a particularly anomalous aspect of British culture that seemed to stand out like a sore thumb- why aren’t there more British Asians involved in football?
This question immediately and almost without fail provided us with our title. Whenever this question was posed, But They Like Cricket, Don’t They? was the answer. And so, in answer to that wrongly hypothetical question, we set out to represent a very different perspective, that delves into the memories of previous generations all the way to the present-day challenges faced in real life by young British Asians passionate about football.