Jason Gillespie also wants an end to dairy (Picture: Getty Images)

Leather balls, milky tea – it’s all part of cricket tradition… right?

Maybe, but its days are numbered – and cows are likely to be happier for it.

Jason ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie, the vegan coach of Yorkshire County Cricket Club, has called for a ban on balls made from leather and for an end to the dairy and meat industries.

The comments, which the 41-year-old former bowler for Australia made to the Yorkshire Post, have been praised by vegans and animal lovers.


Cows in a dairy farm (Picture: Getty Images)

‘We treat animals like shit, we really do,’ Gillespie said. ‘These slaughterhouses, dairies and piggeries, zoos – it’s cruel and it’s speciesism [the idea that humans have a greater right to life than non-human animals] at its very worst and I don’t want to be part of it.



‘Hopefully one day the dairy industry can be shut down. I think it’s disgusting and wrong on so many levels. Slaughterhouses too.

‘There are a lot of things we say in this world that are bullshit. “Humane slaughter” – nobody’s been able to explain that to me. How is killing “humane”?’

Dizzy seems unphased by the fact that his beliefs may annoy one of the club’s main sponsors, Wensleydale Creamery.

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A spokesman for the creamery said: ‘That’s a very bold statement, and I need to understand a bit more about what he’s actually trying to say there.’

But the cricketer said he would ‘have it out with people’ if he needed to, in order to stand up for what he believes in.

‘Yes, they are a sponsor but it doesn’t mean I agree with what they do,’ he said. ‘It’s out of my control, just like the fact that cricket balls are made of leather.’

Balls are made with real leather (Picture: Getty Images)

And while he may be drawing ire from the meat, dairy and leather industries for his comments, Dizzy has the backing of animal rights organisations.

‘All power to him,’ Andrew Tyler, director of Animal Aid, told Metro.co.uk. ‘The passion with which he has expressed himself on this issue makes clear how much what he’s seen and learned [about meat, dairy and leather] has pained him.

‘He’s being criticised because his club is sponsored by a dairy company – but that would be the worst reason to be quiet, for commercial reasons.’