Cricket: Links to slavery could see a 65-year-old stand at Lord’s being renamed | Cricket News

For more than half a century, the Warner Stand has been standing tall in the north-western corner of Lord’s, adjacent to the Victorian pavilion.
It’s in memory of a man whose connection with Lord’s, according to the stadium’s website, ‘spanned almost 70 years’ in different roles as a player, adminrator and editor. But now, the stand that was built in 1958 could be renamed.
The reason? Links to slavery.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the name of the Warner Stand, which commemorates former England cricketer Pelham Warner, is ‘under review’ as the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) reacts to a ‘damning report’ into racial discrimination in English cricket.
MCC chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown told the Daily Telegraph: “It’s something I’d like to take away and for us to keep under review as a club. Seeing Stuart Broad have a stand named after him at Trent Bridge shows the merit of connecting younger audiences to some of the current greats,” he said.
Warner was born in Trinidad and Tobago, where his parents hailed from, almost 70 years after the abolition of slavery. However, his family was reportedly steeped in slave trade, mostly at their plantations in the Caribbean.
Warner’s grandfather, Colonel Edward Warner, owned lucrative tobacco and sugar estates in Trinidad and Dominica. It is reported that slave labour from Africa was employed at these estates, from which the family made a fortune. After the British government abolished the slave trade, they paid compensation to the Warner family.Most Read
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Warner may not have much to do directly with his family’s past, but it is argued in England that he benefited from their fortunes.
Dr Richard Sargeant, an academic and former cricketer, was earlier quoted as saying The Daily Telegraph: “I’d ask how a black person is meant to feel when they go to Lord’s, the so-called home of cricket, and there is a stand named after a man whose family wealth was built on slavery?”
Warner died in 1963 and has been celebrated as the Grand Old Man of English Cricket. He played 15 Tests for England, served as chairman of selectors and managed the Bodyline tour of 1932-33.