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Exclusive: Sports warned to be more inclusive during celebrations

Essex captain Tom Westley holds the Bob Willis Trophy as he celebrates on the Pavilion balcony with his teammates and head coach Anthony McGrath during Day 5 of the Bob Willis Trophy Final between Somerset and Essex at Lord's Cricket Ground on September 27, 2020 in London, England.  - GETTY IMAGES
Essex captain Tom Westley holds the Bob Willis Trophy as he celebrates on the Pavilion balcony with his teammates and head coach Anthony McGrath during Day 5 of the Bob Willis Trophy Final between Somerset and Essex at Lord's Cricket Ground on September 27, 2020 in London, England. - GETTY IMAGES

Sports have been warned to develop clearer plans to ensure title celebrations are inclusive after Essex cricketers were forced to apologise for spraying a Muslim teammate with beer.

The county initially said the actions of their players did not meet the club's "inclusive values" after Feroze Khushi, the batsman, had beer poured over him on the balcony at Lord's.

However, Sanjay Bhandari, the chair of Kick It Out, and Monty Panesar, the first Sikh to play for England, both told Telegraph Sport that the clubs and governing bodies can do more to avoid "champagne celebration" embarrassments.

"There is a lesson to be learned here across all sports about consciously including everyone," said Bhandari. When England secured their dramatic World Cup victory in 2019, players waited for Muslims Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid to step away before spraying champagne.

Panesar, who is a patron for Show Racism the Red Card, suggests pre-season diversity meetings should be agreed across all sports so players can openly air their views on an array of different situations

"All sports, not only cricket, should have a diversity meeting before the start of the season, and should just talk about these issues," he said. "Some teammates may like alcohol, some may not like alcohol. There's always going to be a teammate who is going to say 'alright guys, before we enjoy champagne celebrations, we need certain players out of the picture'. It's as simple as that really."

Bhandari said he was supportive of Premier League swapping post-match champagne to trophies in most circumstances. “In society we all have a role to play in educating ourselves around what could potentially cause offence to others based on their cultural beliefs," he said. "In the case of the cricket team celebrating with champagne and spraying a young Muslim player in the process, the players have clearly got caught up in their understandable celebrations and not given thought to how that might be inappropriate behaviour for some of their teammates. The Premier League did a good job in this respect by changing post-game awards from champagne to trophies. These are small but significant rituals.”

Khushi had beer poured over him following Sunday's draw with Somerset which landed them the Bob Willis Trophy. "As a group, we have come together and discussed the event, and on reflection, we are disappointed we let this happen," Essex captain Tom Westley said on social media on Tuesday night. "On behalf of myself and the team, we would like to apologise for any offence that was caused during our celebrations at Lord's on Sunday."

Sajid Patel, co-founder of the National Cricket League in Essex and East London, described the pictures of the incident at Lord's as "offensive", while Gulfraz Riaz, chairman of the Asian Cricket Council, said it was "wrong".

"Counties have just got to manage the process," he added. "England got it right when they won the World Cup. Then it was a two-way process. The players who were religiously not able to partake in the spraying of alcohol were in the first picture and then left when the second photo was taken."