If you believe black lives matter, you should take the knee: Michael Holding

Former West Indies cricketer Michael Holding was a tad bemused after South Africa’s Quinton de Kock refused to ‘take a knee’ and missed the game against the West Indies in the T20 World Cup 2021. On Monday, October 25, Cricket South Africa released a statement asking its players to take a unified approach towards racism.

During the toss, Proteas’ skipper Temba Bavuma said that De Kock missed the game due to ‘personal reasons’ after which more details on the matter came to the fore. Holding said that if one is against racism, then there’s no reason why one shouldn’t ‘take a knee’ as a part of protest.

“I never will understand how anyone can say that they believe that black lives, Asian lives, and white lives and everybody’s life is equal and they all matter – and then, you have a situation where you are trying to prove that you believe that, and don’t take that opportunity,” Holding told inews.co.uk.

In the meantime, De Kock has issued an apology and insisted that he is ‘not a racist’. Holding said that the southpaw should have taken the knee from the very beginning if he was involved in the fight against racism.

I can only hope from his statement that he made a silly mistake, says Michael Holding

“There is a worldwide recognised and accepted gesture to show that you believe that black lives matter, and that is what has been happening since the killing of George Floyd. And you refuse to do that gesture? I will never understand how that can be the case.

“But I don’t know enough about the young man to draw any conclusions. I can only hope from his statement that he made a silly mistake and realised the error of his ways and now he is going to do what he should have been doing from the very beginning,” Holding added.

George Floyd’s demise in 2020 has added fuel to fire in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and since then, Holding has voiced his opinions quite a few times. The veteran event went on to write a third book, titled ‘Why We Kneel, How We Rise’, also shortlisted for William Hill’s Sports Book of the Year.