Yorkshire CCC racism row Comment: DCMS twist heightens need for a public inquiry into Azeem Rafiq racism case - Chris Waters

As the revelations at the front and back of this newspaper show, the need for that inquiry is surely irrefutable.

It is not just the disputed nature of the evidence which has had such huge repercussions in Yorkshire and beyond and for cricket in general, along with numerous individuals who have lost their jobs and/or whose careers and reputations are at stake, but the smorgasbord of factors surrounding the saga.

Not least the extraordinary intervention – or rather non-intervention – of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, which, despite possessing a full copy of the independent report into Rafiq’s allegations, appeared to suppress key findings from it during November’s hearing: not least that he did not lose, in the judgement of investigators, his cricketing career to racism.

That Rafiq’s insistence to the contrary – he is entitled to the view – was allowed to pass unchallenged by MPs at the hearing is quite extraordinary and frankly egregious given the extreme consequences that have ensued from the matter: the loss of millions of pounds of club money; the departure of over 20 staff, many in extremely unsatisfactory and, one would say, unfair circumstances; the fleeing avalanche of sponsors, almost crushed in the rush to get out; the intervention of the politicians themselves, and so on.

The report, conducted by law firm Squire Patton Boggs over a 10-month period, instead determined that Rafiq lost his career – which ended at Yorkshire in 2018 – to “factors relating to both his form and his attitude”.

“Race and religion played no part in the decision not to extend his contract”, said investigators, adding that the decision was “purely a cricketing one”.

So why, then, did Julian Knight MP, chair of the DCMS select committee, not mention any of this, or his colleagues mention it, when Rafiq gave evidence during a hearing in which Knight admitted that he’d read the report?

Instead, after directly asking Rafiq: “Do you think you lost your career because of racism?”, John Nicolson MP, after the affirmative response, followed up with the comment: “That must be a terrible feeling.”

“It is horrible. Yes, it is horrible,” replied Rafiq.

“You are still a young man,” Nicolson added. “To be looking, at your age, at a lost career must be very upsetting.”

As the sentiment lingered, like the final chord on a cathedral organ, Knight and the rest of the committee stayed as silent as a congregation and, within seconds, the pews of power emptied as Knight concluded that part of the proceedings.

It would perhaps be fair to suggest, under the circumstances, that the DCMS has been somewhat economical with the truth and perhaps even ventured into the realms of something more peterburing, such as flagrant deception.

What else would you call it, indeed? The report was in its hands. It was perhaps the most unhappy allegation raised by Rafiq, and one of the most resonant. A public inquiry must start with Knight and his team of Trappist monks.

And what about the allegations against Gary Ballance, the Yorkshire batsman who has not played first-team cricket since due to mental health problems? Ballance admitted using the P-word to Rafiq on nights out in their younger days in the context of two former best friends engaging in friendly verbal fire – more pathetic than poisonous, opined investigators.

There is nothing friendly or acceptable about the P-word but why did the DCMS neither mention nor probe that it was alleged that Rafiq used to tell Ballance to “f*** off back to Zimbabwe”, an improbable method of returning to his homeland and the sort of comment that can hardly be waved through in the days when we walk on the sharpest eggshells in terms of language?

The report ruled that Rafiq “often made comments about GB’s nationality/heritage” to add to the anti-semetic comments well circulated for which he has profusely and properly apologised.

Nor did Knight and his stooges speak up when Rafiq was permitted the free pass of claiming that Ballance used the term “Kevin” in a derogatory sense to describe all people of colour, a suggestion that the report rejected while at the same time deciding that Rafiq himself used the term.

To compound the felonies, by no means exhausted here, Knight had two months earlier demanded that Yorkshire release the report in the interests of transparency. He then declined to publish it under parliamentary privilege and instead published only Rafiq’s version of events in the form of his witness statement to Leeds employment tribunal. Lord Kamlesh Patel, the Yorkshire chairman, immediately settled that case for around £200,000 on taking office, his appointment invalid under club rules. No questions asked again, you might say.

Earlier in the hearing, as the committee “grilled” Rafiq with all the intensity that an inoperative cooker grills a slice of bread, Julie Elliott, MP for Sunderland Central, opened her “questioning” – as trusting living rooms looked on in horror – with the statement: “I want to start by quoting something back you said earlier in evidence where you said, ‘It is only little Azeem Rafiq, no one will believe him.’ Can I just say that I believe you and I am sure this committee believes you. Do not for a second think that we do not believe you. I think most decent people in this country believe you.”

Never mind Rafiq, do we believe the DCMS?

That is the £200,000 question.