Azeem Rafiq affair: Yorkshire CCC members want voices heard with threat of EGM

Chris Marshall and James Himsworth need 400 members to support their call as they attempt to challenge the existing hierarchy over both the way they have handled former player Rafiq’s claims and their general governance.

They have currently enlisted the backing of around 100 and are now urging others to join them by making contact on [email protected] to help instigate change.

Speaking this weekend, after the resignation of chairman Roger Hutton, Marshall said: “What we can’t do is we can’t let them shuffle the same pack and leave the same jokers in.

“There needs to be a wholesale change on the board. We feel that more than anything, members need to have a much bigger say in determining what would give them confidence and comfort in the way Yorkshire was being run in the future.

“We feel Yorkshire needs that because they are haemorrhaging members. A lot of members have felt that the right thing to do is to not renew or to say they’re not going to renew.

“It doesn’t really help the club and it doesn’t help the people who want the club to grow, so we want to have another push to make sure people see that even just the threat of an EGM may make them listen to us and listen to more people.”

Hutton’s resignation came after it emerged that a report into Rafiq’s complaint included an admission that one player had used the word “P***” in reference to him but that Yorkshire had dismissed it as “friendly banter”.

With sponsors severing their links with the county and after former England batter Gary Ballance had admitted using “a racial slur” against Rafiq, the ECB suspended Ballance from England selection and Yorkshire from hosting international matches.

The club’s new chairman Lord Kamlesh Patel will hold a press conference this afternoon to address the escalating crisis at Yorkshire.