Former Cricket Scotland chair attacks ‘fatally flawed’ racism report

The former chairman of Cricket Scotland has criticized last year’s inquiry into racism in sport, calling the report “fatally and irretrievably flawed” and calling on the Scottish Government to carry out an independent inquiry into how it was compiled.

Tony Brian, who was chairman of Cricket Scotland from 2015 to 2022, has submitted a ‘complaints and whistleblowing notices’ document to SportScotland, the body which oversees the publication of the competition Changing borders report in July 2022. His findings have also been copied to the First Minister of Scotland and Audit Scotland.

Brian claims that the report’s flaws mean Cricket Scotland’s charge of institutional racism, which led to the board’s mass resignation, was unfounded. He has also requested that the governing body be removed from special measures.

“We now know that SportScotland’s so-called ‘independent’ report was flawed from the start and a gross waste of huge public funds,” Brian said. “The results of Freedom of Information requests and an in-depth analysis of the report and its methodology now clearly show that it was a deeply flawed report whose outcome was predetermined by poorly resourced and conflicted reviewers who failed to conduct proper forensics or even speak to many relevant individuals.”

Cricket Scotland is still dealing with the fallout from the Changing the Boundaries report, which identified 448 examples of alleged institutional racism and found that Cricket Scotland had failed 29 out of 31 tests used to measure the extent of the problem.

Brian’s successor as chairman in March, Anjan Luthra, resigned after only six months, citing disagreement with SportScotland’s way of playing the game. Luthra is yet to be replaced by Cricket Scotland and is currently led by an interim chief executive appointed last month.

Brian’s document claims that as well as “up to £1 million” in public waste on the investigation, Cricket Scotland has missed out on “tens of millions of pounds of potential investment” through the ICC, as the release of the report halted Scotland’s bid to become a full member state, freeing up additional funding.

Central to the criticism of Brian’s report is the role of Plan4Sport, who were commissioned by SportScotland to carry out the review of Scottish cricket. Plan4Sport is described in the document as “a small three-person consultancy based in Staffordshire at a residential address” which had previously worked for SportScotland – and was therefore not fully independent.

After ten months, 448 cases of discrimination and 31 indicators of institutional racism have not been published. Following a Freedom of Information request, SportScotland revealed it “did not validate or monitor the methods or findings”.

Brian claims that key witnesses were not called for interview and that evidence of “positive experiences of involvement” was given no weight. It has also been suggested that Plan4Sport had previously worked with Cricket Scotland on its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion framework and raised no concerns about discrimination.

In response, SportScotland issued the following statement: “The fact that people continue to refuse to accept the findings of Changing The Boundaries is worrying. Denial of racism is an obstacle to racial equality and causes further damage to the sport that so many people in communities around the country love.

“The previous Cricket Scotland Board accepted the findings of the Changing The Boundaries report in full, which apologized several times for the problems of racism and discrimination in the sport. The governing body is now fully committed to implementing all the recommendations contained in the report and we will continue to support them in the rebuilding process.

“We have complete confidence in how the Changing The Boundaries review was conducted and will not conduct any other reviews.”