The former Yorkshire chairmen Roger Hutton and Robin Smith have been heavily criticised for, respectively, failing to co-operate with the Professional Cricketers’ Association’s initial investigation into the racist abuse described by Azeem Rafiq, and for holding up progress.
In a meeting of the the digital, culture, media and sport select committee Julian Metherell, the PCA’s non-executive chairman, accused Hutton, who resigned as Yorkshire’s chairman last November, of failing to respond to repeated attempts to make contact before eventually providing “nothing that was in any way helpful”.
Meanwhile an interview with the Yorkshire Post given last week by Smith, who was chairman between 2002 and 2005 and again between 2018 and 2020, in which Lord Patel’s appointment as chair last year and his subsequent reforms were dismissed as “not valid”, was described as “abhorrent and totally obstructive”.
The PCA had been called to defend their record after Rafiq described their initial response to his accusations as “incredibly inept”. Rob Lynch, their chief executive, admitted that “in this dispute with Yorkshire we did not meet the standards we would have wished to”, and said the organisation had since apologised to Rafiq.
Metherell detailed his contact with Yorkshire over Rafiq’s allegations. “I personally tried to contact Mr Hutton on a number of occasions, both by email and telephone, and those calls and those emails went unanswered until I sent a note to Mr Hutton to say we were under increasing pressure to comment and we would be forced to go public and say Yorkshire were not returning any of our calls,” he said. “Mr Hutton did then get back to me, but nothing we received from Yorkshire at that time was in any way helpful. One of our failings at the PCA is we placed far too much confidence in Yorkshire and the ECB.”
Julian Knight, the Conservative MP and chair of the DCMS committee, asked the PCA’s representatives to comment on Smith’s more recent intervention, which he summarised as a case of “individuals holding up progress for their own very particular reasons”. Unconvinced by Lynch’s initial response that he was “not across the detail” but it seemed “extremely sad”, he sought further comment from Metherell. “We only know what we read in the press but if [the report] is accurate it is abhorrent, it’s totally obstructive and frankly these are some of the great barriers we face in trying to make cricket more inclusive,” Metherell said. “These minorities cannot prevail, they won’t win and with your support we have to drive this out of the game.”
Metherell also revealed that the PCA would be consulting Rafiq before drawing up a code of conduct surrounding issues of discrimination. “There is a clear code of conduct on gambling and drugs, and it is zero tolerance,” he said. “We don’t have that today on discrimination. We have to have that, and that is something we look forward to working with Azeem on in the near future.”
After the hearing Rafiq tweeted: “Watching today’s session has been a refreshing experience. To hear someone in the game show leadership in the manner Julian Metherell has gives me some hope for the future. He’s clearly someone that should be considered heavily for the ECB chairman’s role.”
While praising the current Derbyshire dressing room Anuj Dal, the 25-year-old who was elected the PCA’s vice-chair last year, described his own reaction to Rafiq’s evidence. “I was pretty heartbroken,” he said. “Not only because of what he had experienced but because a lot of what he said hit home for me personally. At times in my career I have had to face issues I felt uncomfortable with, that I felt hadn’t been dealt with in the correct way.
“There were instances as I was growing up when Asian players were stereotyped as being lazy. I remember specific hand gestures that were made for players of colour, and also comments that were made while senior members of staff were laughing along, and that to me was heartbreaking. I didn’t want to be seen as a troublemaker, and I was in a position where I had to brush things under the carpet and get on with it. I think we’ve seen there are issues within the game as a whole. Clearly it’s not just at Yorkshire. I’ve experienced these things personally.”
