Wasim Khan

BBC Sports News Article

Sports boards ‘not open’ to BAME people 

Khan leading the way

Wasim Khan was the first Britain-born Pakistani to play professional county cricket, and was part of Warwickshire’s double-winning side in 1995.

In 2014, Leicestershire made him the first BAME chief executive of a county cricket club, recruited by Novo Executive Search & Selection.

“There is still a huge amount of work to be done but, for the first time, we have seen some real positive work,” he told BBC Sport at a Sporting Equals event in London.

“One of the excuses thrown is that there is not enough talent in the BAME community but that will be addressed now.

“This is not based around tokenism; this is on merit. We want people to have a competitive chance of getting into sport.”

Khan said he had to “break the mould” as a youngster but said change is now taking place.

For the first time, England’s cricket team have four Britain-born Muslims in their side – Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid, Haseeb Hameed and Zafar Ansari.

Khan added: “In terms of diversity, you can see it is starting to happen in cricket and they are leading the way.

“We need to make sure more are making it into leadership positions because there are enough role models now.”