Now will Yorkshire CCC act over Azeem Rafiq racism scandal? – The Yorkshire Post says

THAT at least 34 of this region’s MPs, and two mayors, have signed a joint letter to the England and Wales Cricket Board demanding an “immediate independent inquiry” into Yorkshire Cricket Club’s contemptible response to racist remarks made towards former player Azeem Rafiq by Gary Ballance, the former England batsman, is indicative of the public’s outrage.
A Parliamentary committee is to consider Yorkshire County Cricket Club's response to the racist language used towards Azeem Rafiq by a team-mate.A Parliamentary committee is to consider Yorkshire County Cricket Club's response to the racist language used towards Azeem Rafiq by a team-mate.
A Parliamentary committee is to consider Yorkshire County Cricket Club's response to the racist language used towards Azeem Rafiq by a team-mate.

It beggars belief, to paraphrase the withering intervention of Health Secretary Sajid Javid, that heads have not already rolled in an unedifying scandal where Yorkshire’s woefully ineffective inquiry process risks causing as much offence as the outrageous racist term originally used by a team-mate towards Rafiq.

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No wonder Julian Knight, chair of Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, has summonsed YCCC chair Roger Hutton to explain why the club thinks “that those who have used this language” have not already been sacked.

A Parliamentary committee is to consider Yorkshire County Cricket Club's response to the racist language used towards Azeem Rafiq by a team-mate.A Parliamentary committee is to consider Yorkshire County Cricket Club's response to the racist language used towards Azeem Rafiq by a team-mate.
A Parliamentary committee is to consider Yorkshire County Cricket Club's response to the racist language used towards Azeem Rafiq by a team-mate.

But this should not exempt Martyn Moxon, the club’s director of professional cricket, answering for the dressing room culture at Headingley where Emerald has now ended its brand association, and other sponosrs have pulled out, or chief executive Mark Arthur explaining his handling of this sorry saga, including his odd decision to ignore a letter from Alex Sobel MP whose Leeds constituency includes the ground.

And it is also paramount, as former Keighley MP John Grogan, a passionate sports fan, calls for Yorkshire to hold an extraordinary general meeting, that the ECB’s inquiry is truly ‘independent’ – it, too, has serious questions to answer about its negligent oversight of a club that still sees fit to dismiss racism as ‘banter’ rather than a stain on the entire sport and society.

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