Black British Sport Stars

Sport is a key cultural activity in most Western nations. Despite Black people being present in Britain for a long period of time, there are limited accounts of their participation in sporting events before the 18th Century.

In today’s multi-ethnic Britain you’ll find black people are present in almost every prominent sport at both professional and amateur levels, It wasn’t always this way though. Black sportsmen and women found it difficult to break through into prominent teams and sporting clubs, often facing discrimination from teammates, the public and the press, as well as professional sporting organisations.

The first consistently common accounts of Black British sports stars are of Black Boxers.

Black Boxers in Britain

Black boxers first came to prominence toward the end of the 18th Century. Joe Leashley is the first recorded African Boxer in Britain. He fought and defeated Tom Treadway in 1791, another record shows his win against ‘Stewey the Breakman’ in 1796. Other Black Boxers of this era include Sam Robinson, Harry Sutton, Massa Kendrick and many others.

In the early part of the 19th century. We see more records of African, Caribbean and Black British boxers. The most famous of all were Bill Richmond and Tom Molineaux. Both men fought the celebrated English boxer, Tom Cribb.

In the 20th Century, there were still a number of Black British boxers such as Randolph Turpin, John Conteh,Frank Bruno and Lennox Lewis who achieved high fame and other boxers such as Jack Leslie and Len Johnson were quickly forgotten after their careers ended.

Black Footballers

When thinking about Black people participating in professional sports today, the sport that stands out is the national game, football (soccer). In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, we begin to see isolated instances of Black Football (Soccer) players appearing in football teams across the UK.

The first Black Footballers in Britain include names such as Andrew Watson, Arthur Wharton and Walter Tull.

These footballers were at first scarce but they were to be succeeded by a host of others throughout the 20th Century and beyond, into the modern era. Great players from the 1980s such as John Barnes and Ian Wright were preceded by Ces Podd, Clyde Best, Cyrille Regis and Laurie Cunningham. These black footballers had to face a constant tide of racial abuse from fans, and also discrimination from the authorities within the game.

Black Cricketers in Britain

Cricket has taken a bit of a back seat in producing Black British Sports Stars. Whilst Cricket used to be a very popular sport with the West Indian migrants and the first and second-generation offspring, Cricket no longer seems to be the sport of choice for young black kids in the UK. Britain first became aware of the prowess of black cricketers with the exploits of the great West Indian Cricketers such as Sir Garfield Sobers and later Sir Vivian Richards.

For Black kids growing up in Britain, Cricket seems to have been a tough sport to break into the big time. The first Black Cricketer to play for England was Roland Butcher in 1981. Butcher was followed by a steady stream of players such as Wilf Slack, Derbyshires’ Devon Malcolm, Dean Headley, Gladstone Small, Philip Defraitus, Alex Tudor, and Mark Butcher, yet nowadays we see far more players of South Asian origin breaking through into the England team.

A 2013 article in the Voice, Britains’ main Black newspaper lamented the decline in the numbers of young black cricketers coming through since the turn of the century. Perhaps the allure of fame and big money is more compelling?

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