Yorkshire CCC racism 'evidence' deleted and destroyed - but what and when? Chris Waters comment

“After 5 November 2021, it was discovered that emails and documents, both held electronically by the club and in paper copy, had been irretrievably deleted from both servers and laptops and otherwise destroyed.

“After a thorough independent investigation it was established that the deletion and destruction of documents date from a time period prior to the appointment of Lord Patel and relate to the allegations of racism and the club’s response to those allegations.

“The club is not prepared to conjecture publicly as to why this occurred, who was responsible or the motivation for doing so.

“The ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) was of course informed of the position at the time of discovery, and no further action was taken.

“The ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) was also informed of the position, which led to a charge being brought on the basis that the conduct (deletion/destruction) may be prejudicial to the interests of cricket and/or which may bring the ECB and/or the game of cricket into disrepute.

“The club has admitted this charge, as there was no viable defence in these circumstances.”

On the face of it, Yorkshire are saying, or at the very least suggesting, that incriminatory evidence was deleted/destroyed by the previous regime.

The media reports to which the club referred were opaque in this regard – essentially, that some stuff was deleted/went missing around the time of November 2021, when Patel came in and the old guard went out.

Yorkshire’s statement, framed in the form of a reassurance to members that “no personal data relating to members of the club was compromised”, sought to draw a line in the sand – 5 November 2021 being, after all, the very day that Patel came in as chairman.

“The CDC proceedings are ongoing and, as such, we are limited as to what we can say at this time,” added Yorkshire, who had never previously been moved to comment on the case, with the ECB also declining to elaborate.

So, what is going on? Well, just a couple of minor points to start with.

First, this particular charge, and the fact that Yorkshire would plead guilty to it, is not news – it was reported months ago and now forms one of four amended charges brought by the ECB to which the club has admitted, hence no one from Yorkshire will be present at the CDC hearings, so why the statement now?

Second, what reason is there to suppose that any personal data relating to members would be compromised by the deletion/destruction of material relating to this case? A non sequitur, surely?

Now to the meat of the matter.

Some of the questions I would pose are:

What emails and documents were deleted/destroyed that “relate to the allegations of racism and the club’s response to those allegations”? Someone must know the answer; otherwise, how would they know that they existed in the first place and the nature of their contents? If emails and documents were deleted/destroyed, what evidence is there that they were incriminatory/in some way inaccurate? Might they have been private exchanges between staff members, say? And how many emails/documents exactly?

When was the material deleted/destroyed? This is important because matters developed quickly in late 2021 and not everything that happened was foreseeable.

If material was “irretrievably deleted”, who had the expert IT knowledge at the club to do this? Specialist software exists nowadays to recover just about anything, so who had the technical expertise to get around that issue?

If the ICO was informed, then why did it not take further action? Why, for that matter, did Lord Patel not call in the police? Surely the police should be looking into the deletion/destruction of implied incriminatory material in a racism case? Yorkshire say there was “a thorough independent investigation”, but who by? And, perhaps most saliently of all, if material was deleted prior to 5 November 2021, that would have to mean that it was deleted during an ongoing employment tribunal case brought by the former player Azeem Rafiq, one which the previous board expected to win.

Yorkshire were legally bound to share all information with Rafiq’s legal representatives, who would have known their stuff backwards. The consequences of not doing so would have been severe. Patel abruptly settled that claim after 5 November.

Just a few questions, then, in response to a statement that only throws more fuel on to the fire.