Inside the cricket change room: undressing whiteness in South Africa

South African cricket was awakened to the crudity of racial exclusions when former Proteas fast bowler Makhaya Ntini revealed that he would rather run to the ground and back than take the team bus to avoid his white team-mates who, he felt, were isolating him because of the colour of his skin. Ntini’s revelation of the pain of loneliness was followed by a plethora of similar ones by Black cricketers, sparked by young Proteas player Lungisani Ngidi’s call in early July 2020 for the team to consider supporting the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. This prompted visceral condemnation from several white former Proteas players. Against this backdrop, this article explores the relationship between whiteness and cricket in contemporary South Africa.