Wayne Morton exclusive part 2: 'Yorkshire CCC had no need to sack us. They were callous and cruel'

Of all the decisions made during the Yorkshire racism crisis, the one taken by Lord Kamlesh Patel, the previous chair, to sack 14 people for signing a private and confidential grievance letter to the old board was the moment when sentiment started to shift.

Those staff were sacked without any investigation, three weeks before Christmas, and without any of their grievances having been addressed. The letter warned of Azeem Rafiq’s “one-man mission to bring down the club”. For Wayne Morton, its orchestrator, “events proved us right”.

Morton, the club’s former head of sports science and medicine, has no wish to focus on Rafiq’s alleged misbehaviour, none of which would disprove racism allegations. That subject was visited in the leaked staff letter - one which described the former player as “problematic in the dressing room and a complete liability off the field”, and wondered why “this part of Azeem’s character has not been released or at least used by the club in its defence”.

It also cropped up in Morton’s own court case, one that the club finally settled last month, a case which referred to two allegations of indecent exposure by Rafiq, allegations he denies, one of which – in a Kafkaesque twist – saw Morton accused of having hushed it up to protect the ex-player.

Instead, Morton’s chief takeaways are wide-ranging and hard to condense: essentially, how the story became “cloaked in hysteria and only created more division”; how “powerful people jumped on the bandwagon before realising, very quickly, they’d made a huge mistake, only to then double down on it”; how there has been “a lack of due diligence by politicians and the media collectively”; and, above all, how he became “lost in the frustration of not having a voice”, silenced by a club that didn’t want him to go to the DCMS hearing in 2021 (he’d been listed to appear) and then by a legal case that took him to the brink.

In his first interview on the crisis and since his case was settled without a non-disclosure agreement, Morton said: “The biggest frustration for us all was the silencing of us. Nobody could get their story out. We couldn’t get our truth out. Nobody wanted to write it or print it anyway. People like Kamlesh Patel and Azeem Rafiq were given a platform regularly, quoted all the time. Nobody did any due diligence on what they actually said.

“Some people were scared to speak; you couldn’t speak up. The Yorkshire players were told not to say anything. The England players were all told not to get involved; bear in mind that Joe Root lived with Azeem Rafiq for God knows how many years.

“People knew how wrong it was, but people have got mortgages, people have got bills, people have got jobs. Suddenly, it’s every man for himself. Very few people are principled enough to say, ‘You know what, I’ll risk losing my house in standing up for these 20 people.’”

Morton will never forget the numbness that he felt on being dismissed, dumped after almost 40 years’ service.“There was no process,” he added. “You can’t sack people for raising a concern, whether that’s legitimate or not. Obviously, we believed that it was 100 per cent legitimate, and so what should have followed was due process.

“Kamlesh Patel (I refuse to call him ‘Lord’ or ‘Professor’), allegedly with a background in mental and social care, came in and said, ‘I’m going to take people on a journey’, but he never spoke to us about it. In the meantime, Azeem Rafiq had called publicly for a total clear-out. That’s what happened.”

So, what should have happened? “Patel could have had a chat with us all. He could have said, ‘Look, this narrative might be portrayed as this, that and the other. It doesn’t look good. I understand your grievance. I’m sorry that you’ve not been dealt with before. However, the club is on the brink of a big change. This is happening in the world. We’ve got to protect ourselves from this. Basically, I understand your staff grievance letter. This is what I want to happen, and from now on we all need to move on together.’”

Morton insisted: “There was no reason to sack all the staff. It was callous and cruel. Patel, of course, claimed that it had to happen because we had to get Test cricket back and restore confidence. I don’t believe it had to happen. I don’t believe that’s true.”

Enjoy this? Then click here to read the next part of our exclusive interview with Wayne Morton.

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