PAUL NEWMAN: ECB racism case was a shambles… there are no winners
PAUL NEWMAN: Shambles of a case resembled a primary school playground full of squabbling kids… there are no winners, but perhaps Azeem Rafiq, Michael Vaughan and cricket in general can move on
- Vaughan was cleared of racism charges by Cricket Disciplinary Commission
- The panel found that five former Yorkshire players had used racist language
- Rafiq never intended his quest for a more inclusive game to be a witchhunt
How on earth did it come to this? How did the quest to rid cricket of the evils of racism come down to a case of ‘he said, they said’ pitting the ECB against one of their most important and successful England captains?
We will never know for sure whether Michael Vaughan really did say ‘there’s too many of you lot’ to a group of four Asian players ahead of Yorkshire’s Twenty20 match against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge in 2009.
Or whether three of those players in Azeem Rafiq, Rana Naved-Ul-Hasan and, when he was reluctantly drawn into the disciplinary process, Adil Rashid were ‘mis-taken’ in what they heard at the end of a team huddle.
But what we do know is that it should never have come down to one person’s word against another’s in what has resembled a kangaroo court staged in a primary school playground trying to separate a group of squabbling kids.
Yes, there are huge issues for cricket to address and the game as a whole is addressing them in the form of initiatives like Ebony Rainford-Brent’s superb ACE programme and the brilliant Leyton Hub doing so much good for different communities in East London under the guidance of Arfan Akram. There are many more just like them throughout the country.
Michael Vaughan has seen racism charges against him dropped, revealing the news in an Instagram statement just before the official findings were published
Azeem Rafiq was one of those Yorkshire players of Asian descent who was allegedly the subject of Vaughan’s comments in 2009
But not even Rafiq wanted what began as his quest to highlight the racist comments and behaviour aimed at him during his time at Headingley to become a witch-hunt. He wanted and still wants a better and more inclusive future for our game. Not this.
Rafiq said so in his statement yesterday. While acknowledging the news that seven of the eight defendants accused of racist behaviour had been found guilty to at least some extent by the Cricket Discipline Commission, Rafiq also said what he has maintained all along — that this issue has never been about individuals but the game as a whole.
Rafiq said exactly that when I interviewed him at an early stage of this sorry saga — and there was no doubting during our time together his sincerity, motives and the damage that had been done to him at his home county — and he said it again when David Lloyd became an innocent victim of the affair when he lost his job at Sky after being dragged into this by the grandstanding bunch of MPs on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee.
Vaughan got it absolutely right in a dignified statement yesterday in which he criticised his old employers at the ECB for pitting ex-team-mates, including a current England international in Rashid, against each other in such an ‘adversarial’ manner. It truly should never have come to that.
That the governing body did so on what was such flimsy evidence leaves them and indeed Yorkshire with serious questions still to answer and having to contemplate a total shemozzle of an investigation that has not done any good, not least to the victim of all this in Rafiq.
Yorkshire remain culpable for not taking Rafiq’s case seriously until a spotlight was shone on it by the media. The ECB remain culpable for initially leaving one of England’s biggest and most storied counties to stage their own investigation and then, when they realised just how serious it was, panicking and not following proper processes.
Not least when Yorkshire under Lord Patel, either at the behest of the ECB or not, recklessly and irresponsibly sacked 16 members of their coaching staff, many of whom had never even worked with Rafiq, in a misguided attempt to wipe the slate clean. The financial implications of that mis-management have been costly indeed for Yorkshire.
But yesterday’s verdict can be a watershed moment for the ECB. They are under new and much better management now in chair Richard Thompson and chief executive Richard Gould. It is hard to believe they would have made the same mistakes as former CEO Tom Harrison and Patel had they been in charge when Rafiq most needed expert guidance.
The incident was said to have happened moments after a team huddle prior to a T20 match against Nottinghamshire in 2009 when Vaughan was alleged to have said to a group of Asian players including Rafiq: ‘There’s too many of you lot, we need to have a word about that’
If Vaughan had been found guilty yesterday he would have been entitled to appeal and take his case all the way to the High Court. After all, the reputation of a man who has become one of cricket’s best pundits on top of his achievements on the field was very much at stake here. It would have been hard to see the former England captain working again had he lost this battle.
As it is Thompson and Gould can draw a line under this, make sure it never happens again and carry on with the good work of programmes such as ACE and the Leyton Hub. And appoint a new, much more diverse and much more experienced board.
And Vaughan can get back to doing what he has become expert at, talking about and analysing cricket, either back at the BBC who had turned their backs on him or elsewhere.
There are no winners from this. But at least Rafiq, Vaughan and the game in general can perhaps move on now. While the ECB vow never to let it happen again.
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