Quinton de Kock, a South African cricket player, withdrew from an international Proteas T20 World Cup match against the West Indies, after making a decision to not participate in the gesture of taking the knee during the national anthem.
He is notably the first professional player to withdraw from a match on these grounds. Initially, not all South African players on the team took the knee or made the same gesture, drawing attention from some commentators for their lack of uniformity.
Following this, the Cricket South Africa Board ordered that players needed to be seen “taking a united and consistent stand against racism”, and “while diversity can and should find expression in many facets of daily lives, this did not apply when taking a stand against racism”.
Directive to remain
This directive will remain in place for the remaining World Cup games. It remains to be seen if de Kock will play at all through the remainder of the tournament. He had stated that he would “keep [his] reasons to [himself] and it is [his] own previous opinion” for not performing the gesture in previous matches.
There are concerns that the enforcement of this gesture is performative rather than sincere.
Taking the knee is frequently associated with the controversial “Black Lives Matter” movement, which for some, has taken certain actions seen as furthering racial divides as opposed to mending them, as is their purported main objective.
Taking a knee as an activist gesture was first displayed in a 2016 U.S. football game, with former footballer Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem. He claimed he was doing this to protest social injustice that black Americans face in the United States, while some critics have claimed this was done to show disrespect for his country.
Kaepernick’s actions drew much domestic and international attention, and as a result, the act of taking the knee spread worldwide, with other professional athletic organizations adopting it in solidarity. There is, however, a missing context in the U.S. compared to other countries. It may be seen by others outside of the U.S. as a reaction to a foreign issue and history that has nothing to do with them and may be why they have a negative reaction to it.
One such recent example of the aforementioned negative reaction is when Suraj Kumar Bauddh, an Indian spokesperson of the Azad Samaj Party wrote on Twitter “It’s really a bad joke of Indian cricketer[s] kneeling in support of Black Lives Matter. Do these players have [the] spine to speak up against casteism in India? If not, then stop this cruel hypocrisy.” This is one of many such cases showing objection, but the objections to these actions are often ignored or misunderstood by those with a very Americano-centric view.
