On Saturday, former West Indies captain Darren Sammy took to his Instagram account to vent out his frustration against racial discrimination. The 2012 and 2016 T20 World Cup-winning skipper posted a story where he revealed that he, alongside his ex-Sunrisers Hyderabad teammate Thisara Perera, had unwittingly subjected themselves to an offensive Hindi-language racial slur.
Sammy made a series of posts over on Instagram in an attempt to get a clearer understanding of the situation. One of his posts featured US-based Indian comedian Hasan Minhaj’s video on racist stereotypes prevailing in India. Sammy mentioned in his story that at the time, he had misunderstood what that particular word means; and thought of it as a good-natured nickname that meant a strong black man. In a followup post, an understandably upset Sammy alleged that back in his SRH days, he and Perera were frequently referred to by that name.
Sammy’s Instagram outrage is just one aspect of his strong, vocal support towards the #blacklivesmatter social media trend. In a tweet earlier this week, he had appealed to the ICC and its member boards to adopt a firm stand against racism in cricket.
“@ICC and all the other boards are you guys not seeing what’s happening to ppl like me? Are you not gonna speak against the social injustice against my kind. This is not only about America. This happens every day #BlackLivesMatter now is not the time to be silent. I wanna hear u,” he had tweeted.
His West Indies teammate Chris Gayle has also been a proponent of rising against racism in cricket. Gayle recently admitted to being a victim of skin-color based discrimination; going as far as to say that ‘it’s a myth that cricket is free of racism’.