Three years on from my interview with Azeem Rafiq, it’s surreal to see where we and the game have ended upAzeem Rafiq sat well outside cricket’s consciousness in July 2020. It had been nearly two years since Yorkshire had let him go for a second time and it took an interview with the Professional Cricketers’ Association, published on their website and probably read by a handful of people, to bring him back into my mind. The subject was a new business Rafiq had opened with his family, a tea shop in Rotherham. While mapping a future outside cricket, he still had ambitions to keep playing.I arranged an interview with Rafiq because I wanted to know how a once trailblazing Yorkshire...
Azeem Rafiq will have wanted vindication but at least we have a decisive understanding of what is and what is not acceptableAfter charges against him of bringing cricket into disrepute were dismissed on Friday, Michael Vaughan said in what was generally a well-judged statement that “there are no winners in this process”. To say that you can only be white, and never have experienced the kind of discrimination that made the process necessary.So let’s be clear: the Cricket Discipline Commission (CDC) vindicated Azeem Rafiq. Having experienced racism at Yorkshire, having found the proper channels blocked when he tried to act, having had his life turned upside down after being forced to go public, he will have wanted, and deserves, for...
Every day of silence on Azeem Rafiq’s experience was a missed chance to tackle a problem that has blighted English cricketOn Saturday morning the BBC broadcast an interview with the former England captain Michael Vaughan about accusations of racism, that he has repeatedly denied, made against him by his former teammate Azeem Rafiq. If it was a deeply uncomfortable experience for Vaughan, who has been dropped from the Test Match Special team covering the forthcoming Ashes, then he was at least optimistic. “How we move on from this situation is the key,” Vaughan argued with regards to the Yorkshire scandal exposed by Rafiq. “I firmly believe that it’s education, honest conversations, people admitting that things may have been said and...
Anyone who loves cricket wants a game that is inclusive and welcoming to everyone, says the author of the ‘Fletcher report’It was impossible not to be moved by the emotion in Azeem Rafiq’s testimony at the digital, culture, media and sport select committee and also not to feel angry about what he endured during his career in cricket; not only as a professional, but also as an ambitious junior representing his local town club.As he reeled off recollections of being targeted with abusive language, having his faith ignored and ridiculed, and he and other Asian players homogenised and dehumanised as either “Kevin” or “Steve”, I found myself nodding along. Continue reading...
Azeem Rafiq’s testimony shows the importance of having these conversations in public rather than hidden behind closed doorsSo the sun is up on another good day to be white, straight and privileged in cricket in the UK. We’ve had an unbroken run of these stretching back, oh, let me lick my fingers and flick through the calendar, about 200 years now. This latest, the 73,049th by that count, is a little harder than some of the others, maybe some people are feeling a little sore as they settle in behind their desks, a little tender as they head into the changing room, gym or nets. But if experience tells you anything, it’s that they’ll all be comfortable again soon enough....