Everyone damaged by the Yorkshire CCC racism crisis - Chris Waters comment

Although some helpful learnings have clearly arisen (the importance of working to improve dressing room culture, for example, and a heightened awareness of the subject matter itself), the trauma and toxicity has been too much to bear.

Whichever side of the argument one is on (not anti-racism versus racism, but rather the truth of the story and whether the calamitous consequences that have resulted have been justified), it is safe to say that no one has emerged unscathed from the most poisonous episode in the game’s history.

Certainly not Azeem Rafiq, the central figure, despite a sport and a government that have rushed to his side.

Since speaking out in 2020, Rafiq’s narrative has been unpacked and his personal life dragged through the mud, casting aspersions on his character and, by definition, the veracity of his claims.

When anti-Semitic messages that Rafiq sent surfaced just two days after his first appearance in front of the DCMS select committee in November 2021, an inevitable charge of hypocrisy followed.

While for his supporters it was proof that “The problem is even greater than we thought” for others it was the worst kind of double-standards and the start of a counter-narrative which, this month alone, has seen Rafiq accused at the Cricket Discipline Commission hearings in London of pressuring witnesses and of telegraphing in 2018 an intention to play the “race card”.

If the central character has been so badly damaged that he cannot possibly hope to be widely admired/respected going forward, what of the supporting cast in this noxious tale?

Well, let’s take the example of John Blain.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph yesterday, Blain, who denies the allegation that he used the P-word when he was the Yorkshire second team coach, spoke of how he had considered suicide.

“I had a really dark thought the other day when I looked at my son and I thought, ‘Is he tall enough to carry a coffin?’ said Blain. “He’s only 12, but those are the thoughts.”

Rafiq referenced such thoughts himself at the start of the crisis, while others have contacted The Yorkshire Post to say that our willingness to give voice to the other side of the story - a strategy vilified in parliament by Rafiq’s most prominent supporter in the media, who claimed (without evidence) that we had driven his comrade out of the country - has helped to save the lives of others affected.

As Blain put it: “Everyone is a loser in all this. My overwhelming fear is that this will never go away and someone will ultimately take their life off the back of it because of the sheer pressure and the process.”

That process continues with the results of the CDC hearings, supposedly next week, followed by any sanctions.

And then what?

It is not only people’s careers at stake in this sorry saga.

What is any of this achieving?

Quite obviously nothing - unless an improved pathway system at Yorkshire is your No 1 priority, not a dig but a prod towards some sort of context.

On the contrary, this crisis has created nothing but division, suspicion, fear, loathing, misery and pain.

And, like the worst stalemate on the human battlefield, as the soldiers and tanks take one step forward then one step back, no victory will be announced at the end of it or winner declared.

All that will be left is a trail of destroyed lives, shattered careers and the realisation that much of this could – and should – have been sorted out through simple communication and better education.

Instead, institutions have failed at every turn – not least the cricketing ones of the ECB and PCA.

They have been much too concerned with trying to look as if they are tackling discrimination in the game at the expense of the facts of this particular story and the damage done to the lives of everyone concerned.

Has John Blain been afforded the same duty of care as Rafiq? Of course not.

And so we go on towards the CDC “results”.

A number of charges, in this view, are dubious and unsound.

Will Michael Vaughan, one of our great captains, finally see an end to a wretched couple of years for him and his family by being acquitted of saying the words “you lot” 14 years ago?

Will the denied allegations against other defendants be upheld on “the balance of probabilities”?

The “results”, in a way, are neither here nor there.

The damage has already been done - never to be truly and fully repaired.