One, among many, areas of inequality on which COVID-19 has placed a spotlight is access to green spaces. That the nation's local parks and green spaces have been a lifeline during the pandemic is a widely agreed-upon sentiment; yet while these have been invaluable, the Green Space Index released in 2020 revealed that 2.7 million people in Great Britain do not have access to such a space. Additionally, a survey by Friends of the Earth (2020) found that 42 per cent of people of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds live in England's most green space-deprived neighbourhoods.

If green spaces enable wellbeing practices such as walking, exercising and playing in the park, then the question of who gets to inhabit these spaces invariably arises. Over the course of the pandemic, recreational cricket, a sport widely played by South Asian communities nationwide in these green spaces, was confronted with this question of access. The issue further took on an intersectional dimension as we saw notions of privilege, race and identity collide in particular ways, which is explored in this chapter.

The green space gap

In the digital age of information overload that we are living in, a cursory Google search brings up a plethora of articles on all manner of gaps and inequalities globally – for example the gender pay gap, the racial gaps in educational attainment, labour legislation, health inequalities and so on; all starkly highlighted during the pandemic and set to exacerbate once we eventually navigate a post-pandemic world (International Monetary Fund, 2020). One social cleavage that came under scrutiny in the COVID-19 era was the green space gap, which identifies a correlation between green space deprivation, income and race (Friends of The Earth, 2020). Worldwide lockdowns showed us the extent to which green spaces are invaluable for our wellbeing, both mental and physical, and while this has been an unexpected upside, the disproportionality for those who can access green natural environments and those who cannot became apparent.