Dilan Markanday leads the way in Blackburn’s inclusion drive

At 8.55pm last Wednesday, 10 minutes into the second half of Blackburn’s Carabao Cup victory against Hartlepool, the Rovers season-ticket holder Hafiz Zayd was joined by about 100 fans as he led the Maghrib Salah, the penultimate of five daily prayers observed by Muslims, in a hospitality lounge at Ewood Park. Blackburn’s multi-faith prayer room, located behind one of the goals, accommodates around 30 people, with supporters, stewards and kiosk staff all invited to make use of the facility.

A few minutes later Dilan Markanday, a Sikh of Indian heritage and one of few South Asian players in the professional game, scored his first goal for the club. “It is really important that there are players from all different backgrounds and cultures, and that they get an opportunity to show their qualities,” Markanday says.

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For Markanday that goal was another landmark moment on a journey that has taken him from playing grassroots in Barnet, where he was born, to joining Tottenham aged 12, later training alongside Harry Kane, Son Heung-min and Gareth Bale and becoming the first South Asian to play for the club in a competitive game after making his debut last October. He signed for Blackburn in January and is determined to keep flying the flag for the South Asian community. Together with Zidane Iqbal of Manchester United and Hamza Choudhury, on loan at Watford from Leicester, the winger is among the 0.45% of professional players of South Asian heritage, according to data collected by the Professional Footballers’ Association. Arjan Raikhy and Kamran Kandola are in the academies at Aston Villa and Wolves respectively.

Last year the PFA