The England cricketer Adil Rashid has agreed to give evidence from Bangladesh via videolink to a public hearing into Azeem Rafiq’s racism allegations which begins on Wednesday.
They were teammates at Yorkshire when the former England captain Michael Vaughan is alleged to have said to the team’s Asian players that there were “too many of you lot, we need to do something about it” before a match in 2009.
The spinner’s testimony is expected to be a key part of the hearing as while he has publicly corroborated Rafiq’s version of events, there have since been reports that he may have been pressured to do so.
Vaughan strenuously denies the claim against him, which is at the heart of the case that will be heard by an independent Cricket Discipline Commission panel in London. After opening arguments on Wednesday, Rashid and Rafiq are expected to give evidence and be cross-examined on Thursday. Vaughan, meanwhile, is likely to appear on Friday.
The hearing takes place more than two years after Rafiq first spoke out in 2020 about racial harassment and bullying across two spells with Yorkshire, adding that he contemplated committing suicide during his time at the county because of “institutional racism”.
Speaking in parliament in the autumn of 2021, he broke down in tears as he detailed what he called the racism, bullying and “inhuman” treatment he faced, which even extended to a senior club official “ripping the shreds” off him just after he was told his baby had no heartbeat.
Yorkshire were also heavily criticised when it emerged that it had failed to take any action against any players or staff despite a review they commissioned finding that Rafiq had been the victim of racial harassment and bullying.
Since then Rafiq has also admitted to mistakes in his past and last year he was censured by the CDC for “racist and discriminatory conduct” for making antisemitic comments in a 2011 exchange of messages with another cricketer, Ateeq Javid.
The CDC hearing had also been due to examine charges against Yorkshire, however in February the county pleaded guilty to four charges laid against it by the English and Wales Cricket Board relating to their failure to tackle the use of racist language.
Elsewhere, the former Yorkshire player Gary Ballance has admitted a charge of using racially discriminatory language and will not appear, while five others with previous connections to the county – Tim Bresnan, John Blain, Matthew Hoggard, Andrew Gale and Rich Pyrah – will have charges heard against them in their absence after they withdrew from the process.
