IN 1980 ENGLAND selected a cricketer of Afro-Caribbean origin for the first time. A dynamic debut it was too by Roland Butcher, as he made a fine fifty and swept the boundaries in a one-day international against Australia. For Butcher himself this appearance did not lead to very much, but in the subsequent years plenty of players of similar background have found a place in county cricket and the England side, not all of them pace bowlers.

But around the time that Butcher was acting as forerunner for the Afro-Caribbean community, cricketers of Asian origin were nothing like so prominent. (This may seem a contentious subject in these pages, but the intention here is to examine things as they are, without prejudice or value judgment.) Twenty years ago in county cricket there were two players of Asian origin, aside from specially registered Test players. Today that number has grown elevenfold, and promises to keep increasing. Our domestic game has been criticised for not being a vigorous `can do' culture; it may soon be `Khan do', as three of that name are now engaged in it. The 1990s are seeing the emergence of the Asian player into English cricket, just as the 1980s saw the Afro-Caribbean.

The two Asians of 20 years ago were Basharat Hassan, of Nottinghamshire and a distinctive stance, and Dipak Patel, who was setting out as a Worcestershire allrounder. But in one important sense, which we shall examine, they were not fully Asian: both were born in East Africa, in Nairobi. The number of Asians in county cricket who have not come through the filter of East Africa has therefore grown from 0 to 20 in as many years. Add a couple more current players who have passed through East Africa and we are talking about a significant development, especially as three cricketers of Asian background have already reached the England Test side. And during the series against Australia, Nasser Hussain played the same leading role as centurymaker that Ranjitsinhji did for England in the Ashes series of 101 years ago.

The first if not the biggest impact made by an Asian this season was achieved by Usman Afzaal, when his left-hand batting defied Lancashire and those who thought Nottinghamshire might never again win a Championship match. In his first innings he made a career-best 70; in the second, when Notts needed 220 to win and were 63 for 4, he made 77 not out in a matchwinning stand with Paul Johnson.

`That match at Old Trafford was a good one for me as it was my first game back in the side and the team needed a win desperately. For another thing I was surrounded by a lot of Test cricketers, which was an honour. Looking round at the slips while batting and seeing players like the England captain and Wasim Akram– that was a big honour for me.' Among the traditional forms of motivation in English cricket, `honour' is not often mentioned.

`My father was in the Pakistan army, a major, and never played cricket in his life,' said Afzaal, a Punjabi, who acted as 12th man for England in the fifth Test at Trent Bridge. `I was born in Rawalpindi and raised in Lahore, until the whole family moved to England when I was six. We used to play cricket in the garden and the streets in Lahore with a taped ball.' This early background of cricket kept him playing when he moved to a comperhensive school in Nottingham which did not play more than the odd game; he also had a role model in his elder brother, who grew to represent Nottinghamshire Under-19. Equally formative was Afzaal's choice of the Carrington club: `It was full of West Indian and Asian kids and the people around me were aggressive and confident. I remember we lost the first game I played for them and I cried in the corner until the manager spoke to me.'

Park life: Indian Gymkhana's West London ground is familiar to many Asian cricketers. Here NU Patel puts on the gloves

As he progressed through the England age-group sides, initially as a left-arm spinner, Afzaal found encouragement too from his father, though he had not played cricket himself. `He accepted it because he knew who had to adapt.' This wish of Afzaal's parent that their son should adapt and integrate into his new environment seems to have been crucial. It helped to distinguish him from hundreds of other young Asian cricketers who do not receive parental backing to play sport, particularly in the white community. `My father told me never to give up. It not allowed to put my head down.'

 Aftab Habib, a member of Leicestershire's Championship-winning side last year who has been out with a knee injury the time, received encouragement from a wide circle of family members. He had a net in his back garden in Reading, an older and younger brother to play with, and various uncles to bowl at him ( Zahid Sadiq, who briefly represented Surrey and Derbyshire, a cousin). At seven he was bowling pace for Berkshire Under-11s, and became good enough at sport to earn a scholarship to Edgerely Hall, Millfield's feeder school. By the time he was something of a batting prodigy at Taunton School there was competition for his signature, and some Somerset umbrage when Middlesex beat them to it. But he was to find Middlesex set in the traditional mould of a hierarchical club where seniority will have its say, and he was grateful to Leicestershire when Jack Birkenshaw gave him his chance of first-team cricket.

In Leicester, with its high immigrant population, Habib has been well-placed to observe some of the sociological patterns governing Asian cricketers in England. He has talked on Leicester radio stations in Urdu and Punjabi, but even when Leicestershire were winning the Championship, Asian spectators were conspicuously absent from Grace Road. Many of those who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, to do the manual jobs which nobody here wanted, came from rural areas of Pakistan where cricket was heard on the radio if someone in the village was rich enough to own one, but never seen nor played. To this generation and class, before television and Imran Khan popularised what had been a fairly elite Raj sport, cricket was an alien, urban game when they left for Britain, and has remained so.

Typical were the parents of Pasha Sheeraz, who had an outstanding game as a fast-medium bowler for Gloucestershire against the 1995 West Indians, taking 11 for 111. `My father came from Punjab to Wellington in Shropshire, to Ironbridge actually, to work in the steel industry. He didn't know anything about cricket but he was a boxer, like my brother is.' When his family moved to Slough, it was an uncle who took Sheeraz to watch the local club play cricket, when he conceived the desire to be an opening batsman and pace bowler.

 Habib agrees with the conventional interpretation that Asian immigrants – to some extent, like immigrants of all kinds – have been very keen for their sons to make their careers in traditional and lucrative professions, especially law and medicine. To the minds of these parents, sport was no sort of way to earn a living, because the career-expectancy was so brief and extended families had to be supported for life. It was precisely because Asian families who had come to Britain by way of East Africa had been exposed to other, westernised, influences that they allowed their sons – the Hassans and Patels – to make cricket a career. And now, in Asia and Britain, everyone can see what a fine living can be made out of international cricket, from various sources.

 Habib pinpoints another obstacle which has deterred Asians when he says: `Most of their children go to inner-city schools where they don't play any cricket.' Only recently, if at all in some cases, have clubs started to go out of their way to attract such children into cricket. At Warwickshire Wasim Khan, the left-hand opener who has been captaining their 2nd XI this season, makes the same observation. `A lot of Asian youngsters think they are better off playing in the park with their mates.' He has seen a fine fast-bowling prospect, Hari Khan: `A local boy and quick as anyone. But his father did not want him to keep playing.'

The lack of role models until Hussain reached the England side, followed more briefly by Ronnie Irani and Min Patel, has also been influential. As Wasim Khan says, there aren't any professional Asian footballers partly because there is no professional Asian footballer for them to emulate – while, in contrast, 25% of league players are now reported to be of Afro-Caribbean origin.

`Most Asian children go to inner-city schools where they don't play any cricket' AFTAB HABIB

The present growth of Asian participation in English cricket might have started earlier if Dipak Patel had been chosen for England's 1984–85 tour of India. I thought he should have been, as he did the double of 1000 runs and 50 wickets for Worcestershire in 1984 and could have batted at six and been the second spinner, opposite Phil Edmonds.

We have so far dealt with the factors operating within the Asian community that have hitherto discouraged their talented youngsters from entering county cricket. The host community has also been responsible for their belated emergence, through passive and active discrimination. In the conversation of Asian first-class cricketers one can discern a wish that much more encouragement should be given to their kind from traditional authorities, whether at school, club or county level: then, they suggest, we could see a real flowering.

All of them appear to agree, happily, with Sheeraz when he speaks of the time when he found it so hard to break into the Berkshire side that he moved to Bedfordshire before being signed by Gloucester: `Things are improving and are a lot better now.' And of course, since this is England, and cricket, there is class prejudice as well as any racial. Wasim Khan averaged 36 for Warwickshire before this season and had made four first-class centuries, but when Nick Knight and  Andy Moles broke fingers he still did not get a run in the first team. Then he saw Anurag Singh and Mark Wagh (of Asian descent themselves) come down from Cambridge and Oxford for the vacation and move easily into the Warwickshire side. As Khan himself says, not bitterly but matter-of-factly: `Who is a county committee more likely to prefer: Mark Wagh, captain of Oxford University– not that I'm taking anything away from him as a player – or Wasim Khan from Small Heath?' He has joined Sussex for next season.

`A lot of Asian youngsters think they're better off playing with their mates' WASIM KHAN

Most young county cricketers are marginal players and doomed to remain so, at best: it is in the nature of the system. Nevertheless it is remarkable that nine of the Asians have already changed first-class counties once, and Wasim Khan is about to join Amer Khan and Gul Khan and the others in doing so; also, that so few of them are established, capped and secure county players. Against that, several young Asians are manifestly destined for the top, like Vikram Solanki, Anurag Singh and Owais Shah, in emulation of Hussain.

`I was surrounded by Test cricketers – that was a big honour for me' USMAN AFZAAL

 Warwickshire and Worcestershire have the highest numbers of Asians on their books, not surprisingly given the demographic make-up of Birmingham. Yorkshire awaits its first Asian first-class representative. Many Asians there still prefer to play in their own leagues on Sundays, but ever more are playing for traditional clubs on Saturdays as well. In the Yorkshire Under-16 side there is a pace bowler called Sheeraz Yaqub, who plays for Undercliffe on Saturdays. As the Under-16 manager and coach Ralph Middlebrook reports: `These Asians are passionately keen to win for whatever team they play for, and there is a gradual process of more and more integration.'

Thus it seems to be. But the quicker English cricket maximises the talent of all its communities – West Indian, Asian and other – the sooner England will regain the Ashes.

  Scyld Berry is cricket correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph.

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