The lesser-told story of Judaism and English cricket

There was an old joke told by the comedian Mike Yarwood, that there is no book in circulation shorter than one documenting all the famous Jewish cricketers.

These two worlds seldom collide: cricket and Judaism. In the United Kingdom, even less so. Among a population close to 70 million, there are roughly 290,000 Jews. But somewhere within that tiny percentage, there is an even smaller quadrant of the Venn Diagram, where those communities are in some way interlinked.

As Steven Herzberg, a former off-spinner for Worcestershire, Kent and Somerset, puts it: "It's just a connection: you're a Jewish person and the common ground – apart from the faith, I'm not a religious person but I'm aware of my background – is the sport. That's what I think is so nice."

Herzberg, though, is part of a negligible minority: across the pantheon of first-class cricketers on these shores, he is one of few to be Jewish.

"If you can find the secret sauce on why there have been so few, it would be interesting."

As it happens, international cricket is still waiting for an England men's team to field a Jewish player (Netta Rheinberg played a single Test in 1949 when she was called into action because of injuries on a tour of Australia despite being the team manager). Whether that is symbolic of a structural failing or the inevitable consequence of several relevant factors is unclear. The latter seems more likely, given the almost universal acceptance among those who gave testimony to The Cricketer that cricket simply isn't particularly common among the United Kingdom's Jews. But at the same time, the fact this theory is so widely held might just tell its own story: has enough been done to engage the community?

In the words of one player of Jewish descent: "I saw an article about it in the Jewish Chronicle, and I was like: 'Oh, Jews play cricket?'" He was in a county age-group pathway at the time.

Jack Mendel, a journalist for Jewish News, reckons he has written about cricket only a handful of times. Once was an interview with Michael Klinger, the former Gloucestershire and Australia batter, who has spoken openly about his relationship with Judaism. The second instance followed comments made by the Chief Rabbi after Moeen Ali wore a 'Free Palestine' wristband in 2014. Most recently, he interviewed Azeem Rafiq. In short, the crossover has been rare.

You can't be exhaustive or definitive when writing something like this, for everyone's experience is different. But you can try. And given the events of the last few months – not to mention this correspondent's own background – this feels as important a moment as any to explore a topic that has rarely been touched but was handed unexpected airtime last November through the discovery of decade-old, antisemitic messages from Andrew Gale (on Twitter) and Rafiq (on Facebook).

Gale wrote: "Thought you might pipe up! Button it, yid!" He pleaded ignorance to the offensive nature of the term but went ahead and used it in derogatory fashion anyway.

In Rafiq's case, the former Yorkshire off-spinner claimed that a fellow player was "a Jew" on account of his reluctance to spend money at a team meal. "Only Jews do that sort of shit," he added, committing to one of the oldest tropes in existence. To his credit, he has immersed himself in the Jewish community since, seemingly determined to make amends, beelining to speak to Jewish media, meeting with a Holocaust survivor, pledging to visit Auschwitz and attending an event marking the 75th anniversary of Anne Frank's diary publication as a guest of honour.

In an unreserved apology at the time, he admitted that he struggled to recall a Jewish teammate from his years in the game. Rafiq may have meant for that comment to highlight his ignorance, but the reality is that he's almost certainly right.

And that's where we start, because they have been few and far between.

"As far as I'm aware, I was the only Jewish person I ever came across in county pathway cricket," says Darren Panto, who turned out for Sussex's second team in the late 1980s. "I just wonder whether there are more of us that we don't hear about."

^{Steve Herzberg made 25 professional appearances for Kent, Worcestershire, Somerset, Tasmania and Western Australia (Graham Chadwick/Allsport via Getty Images)}

Herzberg's father lived a religious childhood in Golders Green; his mother was from south London, traditionally a less Jewish area. The family emigrated to Australia when he was nine, and he returned to English cricket later as a local player on account of his passport. 

"I used to have a chain," he says. "At one stage, I had the Hebrew chai symbol [the Hebrew word for 'alive' or 'living', spelt out using two letters] on it. But when I was young, I had a cricket bat on there."

He is trying to ascertain whether people would have known of his faith – he bears a surname that many Jews would recognise as likely Jewish, but they scarcely existed in the circles frequented by a county cricketer in the early 1990s.

"I wouldn't have advertised it. I didn't see much point. I certainly wouldn't have walked around with a kippah [head-coverings worn by Jewish men] on or said I couldn't play because of Sukkot [a major, weeklong festival]. I guess, especially as a young man, you want to feel a sense of belonging and you want to be part of the tribe. You can imagine what a dressing room is like with all the banter, so when I look back on it, I probably was a bit insecure about being different.

"Whether they knew I was Jewish, I don't know. Often, you look at selection and wonder whether there was some form of antisemitism, but realistically I don't think so."

Not everyone is the same, of course. One amateur player mentions a Star of David tattoo that gave the game away, others explain how eating neither pork or shellfish at teatime has drawn out conversations with teammates keen to learn more.

Where are the Jewish first-class cricketers?

As is a common theme, Herzberg can't think of coming across another Jewish person during his three county stints. After taking five wickets on his Kent debut, he was contacted by a Jewish newspaper who ran a story on his achievements. But that would never have reached a wider, mainstream audience. "When I look back at those county committees and selectors, I doubt that many of them would have had much to do with Jewish people." He doesn't say that as a criticism, rather a statement of reality.

The Cricketer interviewed more than 30 people on this subject, and it is no easier now than it was before to draw up a timeline of the Jewish pros in the English game between Herzberg and today. Nigel Rothband recounts one telling anecdote from his time as manager of the Great Britain cricket team at the Maccabiah Games. In all likelihood, you haven't heard of it, but the Maccabiah – considered colloquially as a sort of Jewish Olympics – is one of the world's most populous multisport events, at least by the number of competitors: 10,000 athletes took part in the 2017 edition.

Rothband – whose search for quality Jewish players once led him to take out an advert in The Cricketer Magazine – was tipped off about an allrounder who was playing county cricket at the time, and he went to meet him with a view to persuading him to compete in the 2009 competition. Ultimately, nothing came of their discussion, but that is beside the point. The story – of stumbling across a Jewish first-class cricketer in the UK – was far more significant than Great Britain's chances at Maccabiah. Rather, it was about the excitement and surprise of locating the needle in a haystack. "To find those players is almost impossible," he explains.

Herzberg has experienced that sentiment first-hand, including at a bar-mitzvah he attended a day before speaking to The Cricketer. "Okay, I played a little Sheffield Shield cricket and county cricket," he says, "but people introduce people to me and say: 'Steve played state cricket.' It's amazing how often it happens – it doesn't matter what else I've done in my life, but Jewish people remember that, that there was a guy who played at a professional level. It is rare. Why it's so rare, I don't know."

The Cricketer only knows of a couple of contracted Jewish pros currently on the men's county circuit, though they asked not to be identified in this feature. As for the women's game, one non-Jewish player established in her regional setup suggested – only anecdotally, granted – that she could not recall ever having come across a Jewish cricketer.

As Rob Steen wrote on Rheinberg's death in 2006: "For a north London Jew, playing cricket for England and being one of the game's most important administrators is about as well-trodden a career path as prime minister or bacon-buttie salesman."

It is interesting, as it happens, that neither the ECB nor PCA have any data on this subject – for either gender – a fact that speaks to a wider societal confusion around the characterisation of Judaism as a race or religion.

Steven Reingold was part of the Glamorgan team that won the Royal London Cup in 2021, but he was not under a full-time county contract and was a student at Cardiff University. Klinger was a regular overseas signing for Gloucestershire. A decade ago, South African Zac Elkin made an MCCU hundred against Somerset on first-class debut but never turned out for a county.

Further afield, there have been more. Among them, Julien Wiener played 13 times for Australia; Jon Moss was a fine allrounder for Victoria and Derbyshire through the mid-noughties; Ray Phillips was part of Australia's Ashes squad in 1985 but didn't feature; Ali Bacher played 12 Tests for South Africa and then became an influential administrator; his nephew, Adam, hit six international fifties for the Proteas; Mandy Yachad earned a single ODI cap in a side featuring Clive Rice and Keplar Wessels; three members of the Molins family – Greg, Jason and Lara (two brothers and a cousin) – mean that Ireland have had more Jewish international cricketers this century in one family than England ever have had, as well as several others beyond the Molins clan.

So, what of England's lack of numbers? "It doesn't surprise me at all," says one player involved at a Jewish club. "In the grand scheme of things, we don't have a lot of Jews in the country. Cricket isn't ingrained in the Jewish psyche or played too often in Jewish schools in a way that football might be."

^{Danny Reuben (right), the head of communications for the England men's team, represented Great Britain at the 1997 Maccabiah Games (Stu Forster/Getty Images)}

Another adds: "Not really. Our co-religious are not famed for their sporting prowess. But in cricket, I suppose what has surprised me is how many there have been in South Africa in particular."

Daniel Lightman has written and researched extensively on this subject. He says: "I don't know whether it's the culture of South Africa and their Jewish community or the openness to Jews in South African cricket. It's just something that strikes me.

"No Jewish male has played Test cricket for England. The reason must be unscientific – maybe there's a more outdoorsy culture, but there are far more Jewish people in the UK than in South Africa."

Perhaps there is a point to be made about the location of the UK's Jewish population; the Institute for Jewish Policy Research suggests that the majority live in cities, with cricket – for many of the counties – a more rural sport. And simple maths dictates that in a country where there are roughly 400 professional contracts up for grabs, the odds are stacked against a comparatively tiny community without the same historical cricketing culture of other minorities, where underrepresentation in the professional game is understandably far more galling and the subject of greater scrutiny. As Rothband explains: "We're minute. Does it surprise me? No, not particularly. How many Jewish footballers have made it to the top?" (For what it's worth, there are three in the Football League at present.)

Indirectly, that question might just have a part to play. There are plenty of other possible factors commonly heard well beyond Judaism – cricket is stuck behind a paywall, played almost exclusively in private schools – and others that are more specific to the Jewish community: an amateur league structure that is Saturday-dominant and therefore restrictive for more observant Jews who respect the Sabbath. It is a lethal mix that has narrowed an already scant pool.

But sport – and specifically in recent years, English cricket – talks a lot about role models. So, making nothing of Reingold adding a Royal London Cup winner's medal to his Maccabiah silver in 2017 was perhaps a missed opportunity. Similarly, there is a retrospective frustration that more was not done with Klinger's status in the English game, where he spent eight seasons.

"Some badgers at Gloucestershire will be aware of his Jewishness," says one source. "He was a great overseas signing and scored runs in all formats, but generally his Jewishness would never ever come up. Whereas we look at him as Jewish people and I'm really proud of him. It goes to show that it can happen."

As Lightman points out, Norman Gordon, South Africa's first openly Jewish Test cricketer in 1938, became a significant mentor to Ali Bacher later in life. In 2019, Bacher gave a talk in London – organised by Lightman and Zaki Cooper, who co-authored a book about cricket grounds – on behalf of UJIA, a Jewish charity. The room was packed – anecdotal evidence of the fanfare, at least, that exists for the game among Jewish audiences. Indeed, in off-field roles Jews are marginally better represented. Danny Reuben, for example, is head of communications for the England men's team (and represented Great Britain at the 1997 Maccabiah Games).

"I often wondered how people would perceive me if I'd played professional cricket. It wasn't a Jewish thing to do - you know, on the weekend would you play on Shabbat?"

Likewise, it is not unusual to find men wearing MCC-coloured kippot at Lord's, which itself is situated in a fairly Jewish area, with three synagogues nearby. Cooper and Lightman both wrote about the game for Jewish publications during the fabled 2019 summer. "I know of people who were holding kiddushim (food and drink receptions) after shul to celebrate the men's World Cup win," adds Cooper.

"If Joe Root was Jewish, you'd have more Jewish cricketers coming through," believes Herzberg, who is convinced that Klinger – now head of men's cricket at Cricket New South Wales – has had that sort of impact, albeit on a lesser scale than a Test captain, in Australia. In recent history, no one has come closer to becoming the first Jewish man to play in an Ashes series. One wonders what effect that might have had.

"He played a bit for Australia, he had a really good Big Bash record. Like me, he's quite open about his Judaism. The more players coming through the men's game and women's game from Jewish homes – and who talk about it – will hopefully encourage more kids to come through.

"Hopefully in some small way I've inspired young Jewish kids to try to go as far as they can in the sport. Your faith shouldn't have anything to do with it. To me, that's irrelevant.

"But I have thought about this over the years: when you grow up in a Jewish home, it's unlikely that professional sport is a card that is pushed on you. Traditionally, there has been a big emphasis on education, further study and sport as an activity. Whereas there are other people who might grow up in an environment where there is a more natural pathway into professional sport."

Others are less sure of the importance of Jewish precedents, however – "it wasn't necessarily something that I was looking for," says Panto – perhaps because many British Jews don't have distinct physical features that differentiate them.

"I think it is reading too much into it," says one club player who dreamed of batting like Robin Smith. "The reason I wanted to be like him was that he was an aggressive player who played extraordinary shots and was prepared to take body-blows to do it."

Mark Bott and Darren Gerard are two of the better Jewish cricketers to have emerged from the UK in this century. Neither made it professionally, though both have first-class appearances to their names through university exploits: Bott came through Nottinghamshire's academy and represented Worcestershire at second-team level, while Gerard – grandson of Middlesex's first Jewish president – net-bowled at England's squad ahead of the 2004/05 series in South Africa during a winter playing for Western Province and hit Michael Vaughan sufficiently hard on the toe to rule him out of his team's first warmup game.

Jewish cricket and the glass ceiling

Both men pinpoint the role of club cricket in their journeys and, more specifically, the importance of Saturday cricket rather than restricting themselves to playing for Jewish teams on Sundays. Quite simply, there is no comparison between the two: the Saturday leagues are competitive beasts with a widespread talent pool. For anyone with genuine ambition of taking their game further or for a youngster determined to push for a place on a regional pathway, it is a no-brainer.

"My personal view is that you shouldn't solely play Jewish cricket," says Gerard. "If you're a young cricketer growing up, you can't just play in these teams and expect to get better. You need to play the best standard that you can, and unfortunately that's not it."

What was once a thriving scene with its own leagues has declined significantly in recent years. "It has mirrored the decline in outlying communities," says Mendel. Clubs have folded to the point that just a couple remain. London Maccabi Vale CC are the behemoth, fielding senior teams, moulding a development side and growing a junior section, while Belmont and Edgware, where Mendel plays (and captains the second team), are the smaller of the pair.

"We get two teams out every week, so there is some kind of appetite," he says. "But trying to grow the club is a challenge and trying to attract new people is really hard."

Ray Tammam used to captain Manchester Maccabi; at its peak, he reckons there were a dozen clubs in the region, none of which had their own ground. The games were low-scoring and "ridiculously bowler-friendly", so much so that the joke was that "you could double any score". The lowest score was eight all out, he laughs, and it happened twice. On his teenage debut, Tammam survived 45 minutes for five runs, and the environment turned him into a doughty, dogged opener. But eventually the continued deterioration of the Northern Jewish Cricket League to four teams forced an emergency meeting around a decade ago.

"There was a discussion about whether it was worth carrying on for the sake of it," he explains. "Or do we fold? I was on the side of keeping it together because it was all I'd known for 30 years."

He was in a minority, and the competition died a death. Gradually, clubs as varied as Millom, Sedgley Park, Liverpool Haroldeans, Brantwood and Old Hall had disappeared. At different points, there were successful teams in Salford and Leeds. New Rover, for whom Reuben played as a youngster before moving on to keep wicket for the first team of a non-Jewish club, were founded in the 1930s by a group of Jews and were predominantly a Jewish outfit. The club still exists and has enjoyed success, but the Jewish focus has faded.

Elsewhere, there was a national indoor tournament that included an entry from Glasgow. That, too, is no longer. Another cup competition that featured teams from as far afield as Bournemouth and Cardiff also fell by the wayside.

Why the scene has declined is a multifaceted question – the Jewish Chronicle ran an article in 2009 warning that "the Jewish game is fast dying a death" – but the most common answer appears to fit with the same issues being faced by cricket across a broader plain: people are finding other things to do with their time, while its absence from state schools has shrunk the production line.

As Ian Viner, former Vale chairman, told the Jewish Chronicle upon the downfall of the London Maccabi League in 2010 when Casual Nomads' withdrawal left just three teams: "The whole of Sunday cricket in general has been losing its appeal in recent years. Serious cricketers play league cricket on Saturdays and people just don't want to play on both days of the weekend any longer. As a game it's extremely time consuming, and people have other commitments and distractions going on which perhaps didn't exist so much a few years ago."

But in a community where clubs are fishing in such a shallow pond for their members, that issue is significantly exacerbated. "Maccabi Cricket has followed the same pattern," added Viner, "with less good quality players around, weaker teams and, inevitably, fewer teams."

^{Michael Klinger is perhaps the most famous Jewish cricketer of recent times (James Chance/Getty Images)}

Alex Haffner, Vale's current chairman, acknowledges the size of that challenge to prevent a similar chain of events from replicating itself at his club: "That's why we've really put a lot of effort into that part. Across the whole community, it's not a big sport. So, you're already battling against that.

"Frankly, I don't think the adults have had that much exposure to it, so the fruitful area is the kids – and they are where the opportunity is. We just have to get them enthused and give them the exposure to the game, which they don't otherwise get. That's the problem we're railing against. If you don't have young kids, you tend to find that the club withers away because people get to that age where they are less available. And then, you need to have the kids to replace them."

"A bit like a strong football club who have a big junior section, your goal is to find three or four players out of that junior section that ultimately play for the first team," adds Adam Brand, a former Vale captain who is also Great Britain's cricket convenor for the Maccabiah Games at both senior and junior level.

"That's a great theory, but how do you find them? A big drive has been through the Jewish schools; I think that's the only way to bring numbers. But it doesn't necessarily bring quality, because facilities are almost non-existent."

Reingold went to JFS, a Jewish school in north London. He describes the cricket there as "minimal" – part of a far wider nationwide issue about the sport's relationship with state education. There was a team but no training, led by a coach who wasn't a cricket specialist.

"There were one or two others who could play cricket and played decently, but developing cricket through school wasn't a thing. The odd Jewish cricketer who might be involved with a club and is getting developed through club cricket might just sneak through the ranks and become a good cricketer, but otherwise – from what I know – it's not really in the culture."

Mendel, a few years older, was a pupil at the same school around the time of England's 2005 Ashes victory, and he recalls a brief boom. "There were 50 people turning up for cricket at lunchtime – you had to book it. We got to the semi-finals of competitions. It's obviously died down a bit since then."

By contrast, Reingold taught at a strong cricket school in Cape Town during a gap year, where at one point six of the first team were Jewish.

When not playing for Stanmore – the club of Angus Fraser and Mark Ramprakash – Reingold has occasionally turned out for Vale, who are doing plenty of excellent work in that regard, introducing the sport to children who attend Jewish schools, which play little or no cricket at all. As a result, they have seen their colts' system grow threefold in the last five years, with a dedicated section-head in place, providing "an outlet" for youngsters who might be keen to get involved but would have likely otherwise been lost to the game. "That's really heartening, but it's a small microcosm," says Haffner. As well as their work targeting schools, he credits the impact of the World Cup in 2019 and the All Stars initiative for that upsurge.

At the other end of the scale, retaining older players for as long as possible becomes equally pivotal.

"It's huge because it has to be," says a long-time Sunday player. "The pipeline isn't strong and we rely on one or two new people every year – it might be someone who's moved over from South Africa and is a proper cricketer. It's vital. There aren't many Jewish cricketers, full stop, and there aren't many who can play at the level we would want them to be."

Take MAL (Maccabi Association London); they were an established team, but their core grew older and some made Aliyah [the action of Jews moving to Israel]. "There was no one apart from them to keep the team going, so that was pretty much the end of that," a source explains.

Belmont and Edgware are nowhere near that point, but they have considered dropping out of their league and offering a fixture list of friendlies instead. They are wary, though, of not being able to offer competitive cricket for their stronger players.

There are parallels with the Jewish football structure, a number of people point out. "It has withered away quite a lot," adds Haffner.

"Klinger was a great overseas signing, but generally his Jewishness would never ever come up. Whereas we look at him as Jewish people and I'm really proud of him. It goes to show what can happen"

Until recently, David Pinnick was former chair of Maccabi GB, the leading Anglo-Jewish sport, health and wellbeing charity. He explains that the role of the organisation in a sporting context has shifted, mirroring the drop-off of its youth clubs, which were once a breeding ground for potential players.

"Today, Maccabi GB is very different," he says. "Sport is at the heart of what we do, but it's also health and wellbeing. So, our biggest single event is a community funrun, which is not a sporting event as such."

In addition, they provide physical education lessons in some Jewish schools and run educational programmes, including Stand Up, which focuses on antisemitism and islamophobia.

"The youth club has basically disappeared now," adds Pinnick. "There are a handful left, but when I started there were close to 20 clubs around the country."

A clubhouse for Manchester Maccabi Community and Sports Club was built in 2006, with floodlit Astroturf pitches, a sports hall and a café among its features. "Had they had a cricket pitch there, I really think they could have made something of it," Tammam insists. Instead, Manchester's Jewish cricket community is not what it once was.

Once the NJCL disbanded, three of the remaining teams – among them Manchester Maccabi and South Manchester Jewish, who shared a rivalry – entered a non-Jewish league "to see how they'd get on in the real world".

Tammam laughs: "We got destroyed. We were quite surprised by the standard, certainly of the bowling. We lost probably every game in the first season. And then, we started to get used to it.

"We ended up with one team; it was essentially a mini-representative team from the league, which was full of some reasonably good players. It was nice to do well: personally, it felt as though we were representing the Jewish religion and the perception that there aren't many good Jewish sportspeople for whatever reason.

"I almost felt a bit of a duty that I really wanted to do okay so that we weren't ridiculed. It was almost a pride thing – I barely missed a game between the age of 13 and when the league folded. I wanted to do okay."

The upshot is that there are no Jewish-specific clubs left in Manchester. There is a sadness in Tammam's voice that it came to this, though in the time since he has seen for himself the benefits of playing elsewhere. Ironically, he grew up five minutes from a non-Jewish club but had no idea.

"I went to a club – for the first time in my life – that had its own ground, had a professional, had overseas amateurs, had three adult teams, had junior teams, had women's teams. It was incredible. We should have played in open cricket much earlier. We would probably have been good players. We didn't have a hope, I'm afraid."

He doesn't say this to denigrate the Jewish game, however. It was the crux of his summers for many years.

"I think there's something about being with your tribe in life," says Herzberg. "It's nice to be with people who are like us. It's that common ground. I was obviously keen to be a serious player though, so the sooner you got out of your Maccabi setup, the better it was for your game."

It is a difficult balance, but much of this is about aspiration, and why we play the game. If one's motivation is high performance, then it isn't the answer. But for those who seek a sense of community and likemindedness, then it's hard to beat.

"I choose to play on a Sunday for a Jewish team because there is a lot to be said for playing with people who share the same values," says one regular. "For me, one of the big values in Judaism is that sense of community.

"It's hard to explain, because within the team there will be people with no cultural or religious beliefs. They might be Jewish by virtue of their mother being Jewish but have grown up in a non-Jewish environment. It's not common, but you'll also have people who are Shomer Shabbat [those who respect the Sabbath by abiding by rules which nowadays include not using electronic devices], and – if they wanted to drop out of a Sunday game on Shabbos – they'd be messaging me on a Saturday night (once the Sabbath has ended).

"We have guys who do absolutely nothing with Judaism, have never been to Israel, wouldn't know how to read Hebrew – not that that's required – but it just shows that we have both ends of the spectrum. But I think there is a respect within the team that we are representing Jewish cricket, if that doesn't sound too grandiose."

^{Carlisle Cricket Club, the side born out of Dublin Maccabi that sprouted several fine Irish players, including future national-team captain Jason Molins (Image credit: Dublin Maccabi)}

That response speaks to the reasons for the existence of single-faith teams. Haffner describes it as "an identity thing" but stresses that even if there were still a Jewish league in which to compete, he would rather Vale play against non-Jewish clubs: "One, because it's a better standard but also because we feel it's important."

To a degree, Sunday cricket is increasingly a lottery, given the variety in the strength of sides fielded by clubs who also play on Saturdays. That resonates with Haffner, who earlier in his adulthood was one of many at Vale to play for two teams across the weekend, getting "the best of both worlds", as another player puts it.

There is an acceptance, too, that the best juniors need more than what can be offered at a club like Vale: if a talented 15-year-old scored a hatful of runs away from the mainstream club circuit, it feels difficult to imagine representative scouts displaying much of an interest. For Herzberg, it was a means of making Jewish friends when he first moved to Australia. "My mother encouraged us to play for Maccabi if we were going to play sport, but you have to get into the club system," he says, speaking as a former selector for Australia's Maccabiah squad and knowing what it takes to make it at elite level.

"I think it's very difficult," says Jason Molins, the ex-Ireland captain, who skippered Ed Joyce and a teenage Eoin Morgan. "I think the one thing that cricket has over some team sports in its individuality is that when you come off the field, you know exactly how someone has performed. So, if you're playing in a weaker league, then you need to be pulling up trees and scoring a stackload of runs or taking a lot of wickets to get noticed.

"But there probably comes a point in time when people want to be serious and want to be taken seriously. Then, you maybe need to move into one of the premier sides in the leagues – both to get tested and also to improve your ability."

Molins' story is exceptional, and his club was both things at once. He was part of a golden generation at Dublin Maccabi, a special group of cricketers that also included his brother, Greg, and Mark Cohen, two fellow Ireland internationals, as well as several other excellent cricketers, including the Ellison brothers, Adam and Leon. The team were two-time finalists in Ireland's Senior Cup, playing under the banner of Carlisle CC – a decision made in order to separate the Maccabi label from the notion of Saturday cricket.

According to the Irish Times, the name came from Carlisle Street, near where many of the club's first members lived in an area informally known as Little Jerusalem. Wiener was an overseas player the year before his international debut. The Carlisle Cricket Club Ground, originally built by members of the local Jewish community and located in South Dublin, even hosted a women's ODI between Ireland and New Zealand in 1996.

Three years later, having by then opened up to non-Jewish members, the club shut its doors as it struggled for numbers: the perfect example of the challenges that come with sustaining a predominantly single-faith team.

"Most clubs go in cycles," Molins reflects. "We had the occasional non-Jewish player who came in and supplemented what we had – we sort of needed to do that to maintain our status and competitiveness. But also, I think if you looked through the team, the Jewish players were the spine and backbone of what we had.

"Within Irish cricketing circles, and when I was Ireland captain, people knew my background and my heritage by virtue of the club structure that I'd grown up in. And although I was never high-profile, when we'd have a big match against one of the international touring teams or a victory against one of the English counties, some of the coverage would increase and the likes of the Jewish Chronicle would be looking for an interview, saying how a Jewish guy in Dublin was carrying a bit of a torch for the community."

These clubs will always come in for scepticism from some, who argue that the notion itself is unwittingly discriminatory, but the concept is covered in the United Kingdom by what is known as a protected characteristic, which formed part of the 2010 Equality Act.

And despite those questions, it is also undoubtedly true that there would be far fewer Jewish cricketers without the sanctuary provided by Jewish cricket clubs.

"There would be a lot of Jewish kids who wouldn't play sport," Herzberg insists. "It certainly serves its purpose."

"I've had this debate with a non-Jewish colleague at work," says a source. "His initial view was: 'Isn't that excluding everyone else?' But actually, mentally I think of it as an inclusive space for Jewish sport."

The reality of antisemitism in cricket

That notion of inclusivity can trace its roots right back to the foundation of the Maccabi movement at the turn of the 20th century, where the rise of antisemitism precipitated the exclusion of Jews from many sports and social clubs. They reacted by forming their own, and Maccabi now includes more than 400,000 members across 55 countries.

Not that the foundation of Jewish clubs has eradicated antisemitism, of course. The Yorkshire affair constituted the most high-profile link between English cricket and Judaism – of any description – for a long time, but it was also far from an isolated incident.

As it happens, the report put together by the DCMS Committee in light of Rafiq's appearance before parliament last November made reference to stories "run in the press to discredit Azeem".

It cited as its footnoted example a piece in The Spectator by Jewish Chronicle editor Jake Wallis Simons about his legitimate disappointment at Rafiq's antisemitic comments, in which he also accepted that Rafiq "seemed contrite enough, and it would be churlish if I didn't take him at his word".

There were plenty of articles that matched the report's findings, but this was not one. Quite how an article calling out anti-Jewish tropes came to be considered by a parliamentary review as indicative of how "eradicating racism from the game will be a long and difficult road" is a question for the committee's chair, Julian Knight, and symbolic of how differently antisemitism is often treated from other forms of discrimination, a point central to David Baddiel's book, Jews Don't Count.

On social media, Rafiq's comments were even celebrated by some people, who revelled in the opportunity to delegitimise his testimony rather than consider the severity of his antisemitic language or the simple fact that none of this lessened what Rafiq had suffered himself. When this correspondent subsequently questioned the hypocrisy of those commenters in a piece on this website, one response – posted from an account calling itself The Jewish Community – simply read: 'Lol'. Naturally, the affiliated email address was nameless, since that is how trolls tend to work.

Indeed, a quick Twitter search also suggests that Rafiq is not alone as a county cricketer in having used Judaism as a derogatory alternative for framing individuals' supposed financial habits.

On the same subject, Henry Blofeld was censored in 1995 after declaring while commentating for Test Match Special that spectators watching a match at Headingley from the balcony of buildings beyond the ground were sat in "the Jewish stand" – a reference to not having paid for their seats. He retired 22 years later to a lap of honour around the perimeter of the Lord's outfield.

One source recalls a senior player shutting down a suggestion for an overseas player on account of him being Jewish. He says: "I didn't know how to react to that. In the end, to my regret I didn't say anything." For balance, he can't be sure whether the comment was meant "with an element of jest" or "was an isolated incident".

^{Steve Reingold was part of the Glamorgan team that won the Royal London Cup in 2021 (Harry Trump/Getty Images)}

A separate player remembers a teammate who would go on to have a brief professional career "saying some antisemitic things to me" in their time at the same amateur club.

In both cases, the sources referenced the backlash experienced by Rafiq in preferring to remain anonymous. There is also an anecdote of a non-Jewish player, whose surname was subjected to antisemitic abuse while he fielded on the boundary edge in a county game at Scarborough, the same ground where Surrey allrounder Ryan Patel reported being racially abused in 2018.

Speaking to the Wisden Cricket Podcast last year, Mendel reflected on occasional comments he encountered while playing at university once his religion became known: "There were certain comments: 'Don't be Jewish with the teas,' and they knew that I was Jewish."

Another player recalls his teammates shouting 'Moses' back to the scorers when asked for his name as he came on to bowl. It's hard to imagine that being deemed an acceptable form of banter were the player and central symbol being of another minority group. Rather than malice, though, he believes those moments came from a place of ignorance; for many, he says, he was the only Jewish cricketer they had ever played with. "But," he adds, "had somebody turned around and called me a 'fucking Yid', I'd have decked them. I never had that on a pitch." Another, who played for his club's first team as a teenager, admits to often wondering whether his Jewish surname – and club – worked against him at county age-group trials.

Less recently, there have been plenty of similar tales: through his research, Lightman learned that some players hid their Judaism for fear of reprisal. There is a longstanding suggestion that Percy Fender may have been overlooked for the England captaincy in the 1920s on the assumption of his Jewishness, even though he forever denied being Jewish. Sid O'Linn, who played nine Tests for South Africa between 1960 and 1961, changed his surname from Olinsky to cover his Jewish background. Another source – post-war but not in the immediate past – recalls entering a hospitality suite with his party at one ground, only to be greeted as "Moses and his tribe" by a then-influential figure.

Charlie Sale's book, The Covers are Off: Civil War at Lord's, also raises the subject on account of the MCC's dealings with Charles Rifkind, the property developer. "There was a whiff of antisemitism, no question," Sir Simon Robertson is quoted as telling Sale of the fraught relationship between Rifkind, who is Jewish, and MCC officials, who – according to Lord Grabiner in the same book – were determined "to make sure the Jew would not make any money out of" a land ownership dispute.

A further source explains how he was almost expelled from his school in the 1980s for refusing to play Saturday cricket because it coincided with Shabbat. "That's an example of how far it was from being tolerant and understanding and trying to facilitate access for religious Jews," he says. He was banned from representing the school in sport again.

The balance of orthodoxy and sport

That story is not dissimilar from the precedent set by Sandy Koufax, the great baseball pitcher who missed the first instalment of the 1965 World Series because it clashed with Yom Kippur. More than half a century later, it remains a significant moment in US Jewish history. That could soon happen again: Jacob Steinmetz and Elie Kligman, both Orthodox Jews, were selected in last year's Major League Baseball draft. While Kligman won't play on Saturdays, Steinmetz plans to walk to games. Last year, Kligman's father explained how hearing his son's story had led several Jews across America to contact him, recounting how they had felt the need to give up their sporting endeavours because of the struggle to balance their religious commitments.

Undoubtedly, that exists as an issue for some prospective cricketers as well. As one source puts it: "If you are strong enough in that belief, it's going to dominate in your life, which is understandable. Cricket was my religion growing up, which is why it dominated my life."

Panto admits: "I often wondered how people would perceive me if I'd played professional cricket. It wasn't a Jewish thing to do – you know, on the weekend would you play on Shabbat?"

But of that argument – specifically that those sufficiently observant cannot commit to Saturday sport – Rabbi Nicky Liss, considered by the Chief Rabbi's office to be an authority on the relationship between Judaism and English cricket, is unconvinced to what degree it has prevented more players from getting involved.

"Jewish Law prohibits playing sports professionally on Shabbos but I realise that many in the Jewish community are not that religious," he says, referencing a point made in Does Your Rabbi Know You're Here, Anthony Clavane's book about Jewish involvement in English football.

"So, I don't think that is the reason. It's a shame that it's not more played in schools. I've never thought about why there aren't so many. I think it's about a lack of opportunities, I don't think it’s about antisemitism."

Liss is a fascinating character, who grew up obsessed by the game, listening to TMS on a radio hidden under his pillow as he lay in bed. These days, he is the rabbi at Highgate Synagogue in London, where he also runs a team that plays friendlies each summer. "I treasure my cricket games," he laughs.

"I remember one time, I turned up late to one game because of a communal crisis: Rabbi Sacks (the former Chief Rabbi) had called me round. I explained to him why I had to rush off. He really liked cricket. Our team was quite young that year. It was the seventh over of the innings and our captain said: 'Right, rabbi, you're here now – have the next over.' I bowled someone with my first ball, and you could see these kids who are not regular shul-goers looking heavenwards, going: 'We believe!'"

^{The opening ceremony ahead of the 2009 edition of the Maccabiah Games (David Furst/AFP via Getty Images)}

In a sense, his passion for playing makes him an outlier: "Put it this way, I've played football in a team of rabbis, but I can't find more than three to play in a cricket team."

Among other plans, he is hopeful of turning out this summer in a game put on through World Jewish Relief to raise money for Afghan refugees. A close friend, Reverend Charles Kennedy, captains the Archbishop of Canterbury's team and the pair have run an interfaith tournament together, while he also played at Lord's four years ago in an interfaith match on the Nursery Ground and, through Kennedy, has taken part in a cricket programme run at Feltham Young Offender Institution. Additionally, Liss is keen for the revival of a mooted inter-synagogue competition that was first pitched for 2020 to celebrate the United Synagogue's 150th anniversary. Indeed, back in the day, several shuls carried their own teams.

Perhaps it comes with the nature of his job, but Liss is determined that his affiliation with the sport should be a force for good.

Indeed, he paraphrases the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, a keen cricketer in his day with whom Liss used to play in inter-synagogue matches: "He has this line, that rabbis and community leaders should be batsmen rather than bowlers. Essentially, we should be looking to be positive and trying to score runs rather than knocking people down and bowling people out." Mirvis, incidentally, was rabbi at Kinloss in London, where Rafiq was welcomed for a tour in November.

Liss adds: "I find cricket a very positive thing, using it for interfaith, using it for broader work. Playing against this team of Afghan refugees – they've likely not known any Jews, but suddenly they see a rabbi coming to play, looking to work with them and help them. We have an opportunity to meet people and make a difference. That's where I see my role in cricket.

"I see the opportunities of educating more broadly and bringing people together through sport as a really important thing. People up and down the country just don't know Jews. So, there is an opportunity there."

What can be done to encourage inclusion?

It is hardly an exact science, but it was telling that just a single county – Warwickshire – posted on social media to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in January. By contrast, 15 Premier League football clubs managed it. On the ECB's official website, there is no specific mention of antisemitism. The Football Association, meanwhile, adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism last year.

But as Jack Williams, author of Cricket and Race, wrote: "The difficulties of defining Jewishness and the tiny number of those calling themselves Jews who have played county cricket complicates the task of gauging the extent of antisemitism in first-class cricket."

Some counties – Middlesex and Yorkshire among them – have recently committed to positive changes and outreach work, with Judaism included in those projects. Among the mission statements on Warwickshire's new multifaith charter is a commitment to serve kosher options at Edgbaston's catering points, an extreme rarity for a stadium in the United Kingdom.

It should be said that in anti-discrimination surveys conducted by the PCA in 2020 and 2021, professional players reported no cases of antisemitic abuse. Likewise, most of the people interviewed for this piece with a background in playing for Jewish cricket clubs against non-Jewish sides could not recall facing antisemitism on the field.

One player, who has turned out for Vale regularly in recent years, explains: "I can only speak for myself, but I am very conscious that when we're on the field we're representing a Jewish team who have Maccabi in their name. Therefore, you're not trying to hide anything.

"You're probably conscious that other teams know that we are the Jewish team. We don't want to necessarily get into a niggly battle with them, even if you would be within your rights to have a go at the opposition or whoever it may be. Personally, I'm very conscious of not doing that. Part of that is just that my character is not very confrontational, but deep down I'm probably aware that I don't want us to be seen as the Jewish team that complained about all the decisions or the team with the Jews that didn't do this or that."

That only a single source could ever recall the offer of a kosher tea – a shoutout is in order for Regals Cricket Club – is to be expected. The more religious players might bring their own but, as one former captain explains: "I don't think we'd ask for it, because it might put teams out or put too much pressure on them to deliver something that they may not understand." Or, as another suggests, it is "ignorance founded on a lack of experience".

He adds: "What you sometimes hear is: 'Well, he's Jewish and he plays all the matches, so I don't really understand the difficulty for you.' And then, you have to say: 'Well, he's different from me.' You might get a scenario where someone will play on this Jewish holiday but won't play on another Jewish holiday."

^{Belmont and Edgware Cricket Club are one of the few surviving Jewish teams in 2022 (Image credit: BECC)}

As the game seeks to open up to all backgrounds following a bombshell winter of home truths, The Cricketer understands that the possibility of introducing faith officers at counties has been discussed at executive level. They already exist in the police force on a part-time basis to answer religion-based queries or simply as support for officers who wish to talk in confidence. In cricket, the primary purpose would be the same – but for players, support staff and coaches – with the officer not a paid employee of the club.

On a similar note, multiple sources suggest creating a national resource to help clubs better understand minority groups. The ECB, as well as counties including Middlesex, have already begun working with Nujum Sports in an attempt to educate the cricketing community on matters around Muslim faith and culture.

That notion – of appreciating one's religion – forms the basis of Maccabiah, a sporting pinnacle for some but more often an experience of primarily symbolic significance.

Multiple players interviewed for this piece admitted to being underwhelmed by the cricket on show, as well as the facilities: Israel is hardly known as a hotbed for the sport, and the cost is prohibitive for some potential participants. The matches have historically been played on Flicx matting pitches with uneven outfields.

"I walked around one of them in 2009," one source laughs, "and I was horrified. There were gaping holes, there were bits of iron and glass sticking out all over the place. It was awful."

That it is hardly an elite competition scarcely matters, though. Several high-fliers have taken part – from Klinger and Adam Bacher to Jason Molins and Ryan Maron, who played briefly for Western Province but more recently has worked as fielding coach for Afghanistan and West Indies.

Molins, in fact, had to leave an Irish Universities tour of England early to make it to Maccabiah, where he won bronze with Ireland as a contemporary opponent of Brand, a five-time participant, who explains: "I've done them because I'm a proud Jew and I want to represent Great Britain in Jewish sport, which at times is high-level sport and at times is not."

Another former player reflects: "It's a real unifying experience. It definitely connected me to my history, rather than my faith. There's no answer to this question, but what happens if it all goes wrong again? You kind of feel safe in that environment – there's a home for you. When I went to the first Maccabiah, I saw a side of me that I didn't know anything about in terms of the Jewishness, having never been exposed to it growing up. I suppose it was an exploration of my history.

"When I came back, I processed the experience and I realised that the sport was a by-product of what it's all about: it's about bringing people together and an enjoyment of life, given the history."

Reingold won silver in 2017 at the end of a three-week stay in Tel Aviv. Above all else, he remembers the crippling heat.

"I loved every minute of it," he says. "Sometimes, my friends find that funny – it's a massive sporting event that they have no idea takes place. It's brilliant. No one really understands it.

"I'm very proud of the fact that I've played for Great Britain and have played in the Maccabiah Games."

All the more so, given the tiny world of Jewish cricket and how rarely those two phenomena cross over.