LAHORE: Khalid Mahmood, the former chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, has urged the PCB to announce a decision in favour of wearing ‘Black Lives Matter’ logo during Pakistan’s upcoming Test and T20 series in England, following the decision made by the England and Wales Cricket Board and West Indies Cricket, whose players will wear the said logo during their Test series starting from July 8.

“I would like to salute the West Indies cricketing authorities for taking the initiative [on BLM campaign] and then the ECB also joining hands. So I will advise the PCB to also announce a similar decision [for Pakistan’s upcoming series in England],” Khalid told Dawn on Monday.

“Our religion Islam made it clear 1400 years ago that all human beings are equal and there is no supremacy for anyone on the basis of race, colour or wealth. For this reason, we should stand first in all such activities,” he added.

The PCB should take an early decision in this regard to show its solidarity with the world, which had raised a very strong voice this time against racism, Khalid insisted.

The England-West Indies Test series opener in Southampton will be the first international competition of cricket which remained suspended for four months due to coronavirus pandemic which has hit human lives globally.

After the end of the West Indies series, Pakistan will start their three-Test series tentatively from Aug 5. The Pakistan team is already in England for the series.

Meanwhile when contacted, a PCB spokesman said though the Board holds a very clear stance on the issue of racism noting Islam and country’s laws strongly condemn all kinds of racism, as far as the decision to wear the logo in the upcoming series is concerned, no decision in this regard has been taken yet.

It may be mentioned that the ‘Black Lives Matter’ campaign started in 2013 as a result of the acquittal of George Michael Zimmerman, a white American, who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an African-American teenager, in February 2012 in Florida.

The campaign saw a massive revival in May 2020 when a 46-year-old George Floyd, another African-American, was brutally killed by a white American police officer Derek Chauvin — who knelt on Floyd’s neck for several minutes — during an arrest of the former in Minnesota.

Floyd’s death sparked massive anti-racism protests in the US — mainly against police brutalities —and in many parts across the globe.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2020