‘I did think of the worst instantly after tumble’

Former Black Caps star Ross Taylor has opened up on racial ‘‘insensitivity’’ in the Kiwi game and called on New Zealand Cricket to ‘‘put more resources into the Polynesian community’’.

Proud Samoan Taylor looks at the issue in his new autobiography Ross Taylor Black & White.

‘‘Cricket in New Zealand is a pretty white sport. For much of my career I’ve been an anomaly, a brown face in a vanilla lineup. That has its challenges, many of which aren’t readily apparent to your team-mates or the cricketing public,’’ Taylor said, revealing people assumed he was Ma¯ ori or Indian.

He found himself in tricky situations in team environments.

‘‘In many ways, dressing-room banter is the barometer. A teammate used to tell me, ‘You’re half a good guy, Ross, but which half is good? You don’t know what I’m referring to’. I was pretty sure I did.

‘‘Other players also had to put up with comments that dwelt on their ethnicity. In all probability, a Pakeha listening to those sorts of comments would think, ‘Oh, that’s OK, it’s just a bit of banter’.

‘‘But he’s hearing it as white person, and it’s not directed at people like him. So, there’s no pushback; no one corrects them.

‘‘Then the onus falls on the targets. You wonder if you should pull them up but worry that you’ll create a bigger problem or be accused of playing the race card by inflating harmless banter into racism. It’s easier to develop a thick skin and let it slide, but is that the right thing to do?’’

Taylor noted the New Zealand team management had also unwittingly touched a nerve.

‘‘Not long after Mike ‘Roman’ Sandle became Black Caps manager, he said to Victoria [Taylor’s wife] that, when he was manager of the Blues rugby team, he’d observed that the Ma¯ ori and Island boys struggled with managing money, ‘so if Ross wants to talk about it . . .’

‘‘Victoria laughed it off, and it probably didn’t take Mike long to realise that, however wellmeaning, he’d been a bit hasty in his assumptions.

‘‘When I came back into the team after the captaincy drama, I found myself sitting next to [coach] Mike Hesson in the Koru Lounge at Dunedin Airport. He’d come straight from his house. ‘My cleaner’s Samoan,’ he said. ‘She’s a lovely lady, hardworking, very trustworthy’. All I could say was, ‘Oh, cool’.

‘‘I have no doubt that Roman and Hess and the guys who engaged in the ‘banter’ would be dismayed to learn that their remarks landed with a thud.

‘‘Let me be clear: I don’t think for one minute that they were