Latest news with #NasaHussain
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Baptist bowled over as fourth Bradford club to get generous gift off Park Avenue
BOWLING Baptist have become the fourth Bradford District club - and the second from the Timothy Taylor's Craven League - to have been given outdoor nets that have been moved from Park Avenue. The others are league rivals Hepworth & Idle, Steeton (Aire-Wharfe League) and Bowling Old Lane (Bradford Premier League). Nasa Hussain and Mo Hussain, equality, diversity and inclusion officers for the Bradford Premier League and Yorkshire County Cricket Club respectively, were at the centre of the official opening of the nets at Baptist's Scotchman Road ground in BD9. Nasa, who received the British Empire Medal in the recent King's Birthday Honours list and is the groundsman at Park Avenue, said: 'The nets are in good nick considering they have been sat at Park Avenue for two years. 'They are a little bit longer (than most outdoor nets) but the good thing is the tunnel netting in the middle and they are very robust. 'We had them for five years at Park Avenue, and they did get a battering there because they were free to use, and they are still going strong now. 'The bowlers gets the chance to have a longer run up and, like the ones at Bowling Old Lane, they are set higher than the surrounding ground.' Nasa added: 'The ECB (England & Wales Cricket Board) funded these nets at Park Avenue and when they put the dome in there the decision was made to recycle these nets to clubs. 'Then there was the decision of which clubs would get them, and a little group of four or five people was set up to decide where they would go - everyone had the opportunity to put in for them - and these four clubs were the lucky recipients. 'They are community facilities, but it is up to the clubs to manage them.' Mo Hussain, who skippered the Manningham Mills team at Scotchman Road for a decade from the 1990s, said: 'I was the lead then on the application for the new clubhouse and it was a no-brainer for me when Bowling Baptist applied to have the nets moved from Park Avenue. 'Baptist are at the heart of the South Asian community and there is a real passion for cricket here in this hotbed.' A girls' squad from Great Horton Church Cricket Club were coming down the use the nets minutes after they were officially opened, with Mo saying: 'You can come here on a Sunday, a Monday, a Wednesday and there are different formats being played. The Great Horton Church girls (left) got to use the new nets at Bowling Baptist Cricket Club on opening night. (Image: UGC) 'I can remember it being like this 15 to 20 years ago and to see it being developed is fantastic, and they will get well used, as they would be if these nets were in Girlington or West Bowling as the passion for cricket is so rich. 'The numbers of Asians in the recreational game are growing and these facilities are only going to encourage and galvanise that.' Baptist's director of cricket Shazaid Yousaf, who has put in a lot of the legwork to get this project off the ground alongside community development officer Tariq Shiraz, said: 'We have a very good turnout tonight, although it has been a bit of a difficult season so far for our first XI in the Craven League. 'However, our second XI, third XI and Under-18s are doing really well and a facility like this will give our players, particularly the younger ones, extra momentum and extra motivation to get more practice in. 'We are hoping that every team will use it and we are in a good catchment area for schools. 'We are hoping to have U9s and U11s next season and gradually build up from that in succeeding years, so one of the nets has been marked out for juniors. 'We also have a good relationship with Great Horton Church CC, and that continues to blossom. 'We don't want to be fishing in the same pond as them as the catchment area is so close, but we will work very closely with them and there is scope to have a girls' team down here. 'We have a lot of space down here which isn't utilised at the moment, and the plan is to continue to expand. 'The ground is gradually getting back to where it used to be.'
Indian Express
26-06-2025
- Sport
- Indian Express
How Yorkshire's ‘jazbaati' South Asian community pushed back on racism in cricket
Nasa Hussain, 55, has his hands full during cricket season. As the head groundsman at Bradford's storied Park Avenue ground, he constantly keeps a close eye on the dark clouds hovering over Leeds. And being the disciplinary chair of the multicultural Bradford league, a highly competitive contest with nearly 40 per cent cricketers with Asian roots, he is tasked to quell possible racism storms, the kind that rocked Yorkshire and shamed English cricket a few years back. 'This week I banned somebody for three games for crossing the line. Sledging will go on after me, after you, but comments about skin colour, religion, culture, size, sexual orientation can't be made nowadays,' Nasa tells The Indian Express. Recently, he was awarded the British Empire Medal for his service to the game and will soon be at Buckingham Palace for a garden party. Nasa explains the complexities of mediating conflicts between players with different upbringings, cultures and sensibilities. What Bradford and Yorkshire are dealing with now, is what T20 franchise leagues having teams with players from across the world would face in the future. The Bradford-born Pakistan origin administrator uses an urdu word to touch upon the origin of many brown vs white on-field confrontations. 'We (those from sub-continent) are jazbaati people, we are emotional and passionate. We can't accept anybody saying anything against our religion, culture, colour and our families,' he says. 'Take the common uses of the MF word here. For the locals it might not be that big a deal but you and I can't accept it. We come from a culture where our mothers are our absolute pride and joy. We are not going to accept somebody saying MF.' During his playing days, Nasa was a reputed Bradford league all-rounder. It was the time India's VVS Laxman and Pakistan's Mohammad Yusuf were regular club players. Nasa's life changed when at 17, he lost his father. Burdened with responsibilities, he was forced behind a taxi wheel for the next 20 years. Though, he stayed connected to the game, as a part-time administrator and a full-time cricket romantic. Being on the road for long hours, regularly interacting with cricketers of every community, Nasa, has a deep understanding of Bradford's complex multi-cultural society. The diverse demography of the region makes it a melting pot. Those with South Asian origins form 35 to 40 per cent of the population. The ones who came here from Pakistan are in majority but the Indian diaspora too is sizeable. Over the years, the South Asians have asserted their presence, stood up for equality, in these parts. 'The present-day society is different from the one we grew up in. Back then, we (his generation of British Asians) would accept things. If someone passed a derogatory comment, we wouldn't react. That is not the case any longer,' says the man with a sagely demeanour and deep voice. In 2018, a Pakistan-born Brit player, Azeem Rafiq, famously reacted and all hell broke loose. Rafiq complained of institutional racism at Yorkshire Cricket Club. This made national and international headlines. Rafiq said he didn't get halaal meals at games, his religious practices were mocked and that once the former England captain and Yorkshire player Michael Vaughan told him '… there are too many of you lot. We need to do something about it.' The matter reached the parliament, the English board was forced to react, Yorkshire lost international games and heads rolled. The case crawled, the old order dug their heels but in 2021, finally winds of change would hit Yorkshire. A new framework with emphasis on equality, diversity and inclusion would be put in place. Nasa is also part of the change. He holds roadshows to explain how racism episodes can be wiped out from cricket or at least get nipped in the bud. 'Report it and trust the system,' – that's the crux of Nasa's sermons. 'You fight racism by reporting it. Don't retaliate. Don't start a fight over it. You just have to play clever. I'm a big believer that you learn as you go along.' The learnings, that Nasa talks about, come from history. 'I'll give you the analogy of how the English work and how the colonial world used to work. They used to say things, walk away, and since we are jazbaati people we would end up fighting. Then they'd say, 'look at these animals',' he says. He has seen such situations on cricket fields. Some time back, he was to pass a verdict on a case where the batsman had walked towards the bowler with a raised bat. The batsman argued that he was reacting to a racist comment and he was merely talking to him. 'Nobody will remember what the bowler has told you, what everybody will remember will be the person who walks down the pitch with a raised bat. The right way to deal with racist talk on the field is to report it. Now we've got people, like myself and others, who are on board. It is our duty then to take that further and say, okay, not acceptable,' he says. Nasa is the right man, at the right place. The Park Avenue ground that he is in-charge of is more than a 100 years-old. Few years back, it went under redevelopment and a magnificent stand-on Dome, a giant transparent tent-like structure with arched roof, came up. This would make cricket an all-year sport with local South Asian kids crowding the venue on most days. The ground has a striking backdrop of Bradford's Grand Mosque with bottle green dome and minarets. On Sundays when the game of two South Asian Leagues, each with close to 35 teams, are played here, the sights, sounds and smells aren't too different from a game at Lahore or Old Delhi. '99 percent of players in these leagues are from the sub-continent, there might be an occasional white player,' says Nasa. A popular cricket website in these parts, Yorkshire Cricket, paints a vivid picture of a game at Park Avenue featuring an Indian club Interlink. 'The Indian food on offer today was sizzling away on a row of barbeques with chicken fillets covered in spices, burgers and homemade salsa…. Families bring dishes made at home so the variety is never-ending … the samosa chaat was incredible … Spinner Jay Rajpurohit's mother had made them. Crunchy, sweet with spicy chickpeas.' These scenes are in total contrast to a county that had a long-standing rule of allowing only Yorkshire-born Britishers to play for has cricket in Yorkshire changed after the racism storm? 'You have to do things slowly. When you turn the Titanic, it takes time,' he says.
