Michael Vaughan is to return to the BBC and play a key part in its cricket coverage this summer after being earlier this year cleared of making a racist remark during his time as a player at Yorkshire.
The former England captain will broadcast on England’s first home Test this year, against Ireland at Lord’s, and for the Ashes series that follows it, with the corporation announcing that he will be contributing to their Test Match Special radio commentary and be among the guests for the Ireland Test’s highlights programme, to be broadcast on BBC Two on 1 June.
Vaughan was dropped from the BBC’s coverage of the last Ashes series, in Australia in 2021-22, after he was accused by Azeem Rafiq of making a racist comment before a Yorkshire game in 2009. Though he was initially included in the corporation’s plans for last summer’s Test coverage, once it emerged that he had been charged by the England and Wales Cricket Board with bringing the game into disrepute, in connection with that same incident, BBC Sport’s Black, Asian and minority ethnic group intervened, sending an email to staff at the corporation that described his involvement as “totally inexcusable” and “a shocking miscalculation”. The former England captain announced the following day that he would “step back from my work with the BBC for the time being”.
But charges against him were dismissed in March by the ECB’s Cricket Discipline Commission. He had been accused of telling a group of four players of Asian descent that “there’s too many of you lot” before a Twenty20 game, but he consistently denied doing so and the CDC members concluded they were “not satisfied on the balance of probabilities that these words were spoken by Michael Vaughan at the time and in the specific circumstances alleged”. After that decision Vaughan said he had been “brought to the brink of falling out of love with cricket” butthat the outcome of the hearings “must not be allowed to detract from the core message that there can be no place for racism in the game of cricket, or society generally” and added: “I remain keen to help bring about positive change in any way that I can.”
