Former England skipper Nasser Hussain recently contributed to the global debate around racism, saying he experienced it very little as he was lucky to have been brought up in a multi-racial society and play his cricket in a multi-cultural club like Essex.
"I encountered very little racism at Essex. Growing up as a young boy in Ilford having been born in India and having a surname of Hussain and the first name of Nasser I did encounter some name-calling due to ignorance," Hussain told PakPassion.net
"I was lucky enough to play at a club like Essex where we had a middle-order of Nadeem Shahid, Saleem Malik and myself. We had a very multi-cultural county in the south of our county at Ilford where I grew up with my dad and his cricket school where we had a British West Indian net, British Indian net and a British Pakistani net and we would all take the mickey out of each other when India were playing Pakistan, or England were losing to the West Indies. It was great banter and it was fun," he added.
Hussain further said he was fortunate enough to have come from a white-ish middle-class background.
"I grew up in that multi-cultural environment and I was very fortunate. But I understand that I was a white-ish middle-class, public school educated boy so I can't put myself in the shoes of some of the British Asians that are growing up in certain parts of the UK," he said.
Talking about Pakistan cricket, Nasser said Babar Azam has the potential to end up as one of the greats.
"Babar has what it takes to become one of the greats. In white-ball cricket he is up there with the best of them. He is up near the top of the rankings in T20Is, and in fifty over cricket he is exceptional too," he remarked.
"He did okay in the Test series against England bearing in mind England is not an easy place to come and play Test cricket. He just needs that consistency in Test cricket to be up there with the likes of Virat Kohli. Babar's done that for six to nine months so far. He just needs to be consistent for a longer period of time."
