I had blocked out an over; the keeper quipped, ‘Come on boys, more dots than a dot painting’.

While I am not Indigenous, imagine if I was and that comment had been said? Just a bit of banter, right? Just brush it off, right?

In many ways, Australian Cricket is a mirror to Australian society; the first ever tour of England by an Indigenous Team saw the team worked like slaves, ignored on their return and white-washed out of the history until the 21st century. The tough Colonials taking it to the English, the brave and bold Bradman facing Bodyline, the brash sides of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The 1980’s saw a dark time and a questioning of identity, of a rapidly changing world that saw economic and societal changes that made the world smaller and yet somehow more foreign to the traditional, it was when cricket started to be considered a career and a commodity. The domination of the mid to late 1990’s and early 2000’s when our Prime Minister wanted us to be ‘comfortable and relaxed’, and most of us were, on and off the field.

https://www.cricconnect.com/profile/1065/troy-martin/blog/1714/more-dots-than-a-dot-painting-how-cricket-can-help-reconciliation