The Yorkshire CCC is institutionally racist. For me there is no other conclusion | Yorkshire

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The Yorkshire County Cricket Club is institutionally racist. There: it wasn’t that difficult, was it? For years, Yorkshire has allowed, tolerated and normalized a locker room culture of racist speech. They failed to create a welcoming environment for Muslims and other ethnic minorities. They have and continue to employ staff who have made racist comments.

When a former player raised serious allegations of long-standing racist behavior three years ago, the club initially did nothing and then allegedly offered him a six-figure payout to shut up. Under investigation, they have chosen at all times to prioritize their own reputation and their own people. It is true that an investigative panel concluded that the exclusion of Azeem Rafiq from the team was based on his cricket and not on his race. It is also true that the panel may not have found sufficient evidence to conclude that Yorkshires are institutionally racist. But frankly, for me, drawing another conclusion is not simply a refutation of the available evidence but a form of moral cowardice.

So far so cathartic. For all the comedic incompetence and ridiculous missteps Yorkshire has shown in handling its racism inquiry, anger remains the dominant emotion here: anger at the time it all took, anger at the stories that have emerged so far, the anger at the culture of shameless selfish corporate interest that infects so much of this country’s ruling class.

Above all, you feel angry on behalf of Rafiq, a man who just wanted to do some off-spins and win cricket matches for Yorkshire, and instead found himself co-opted into a cruel fight for justice. who stole his time and his joy, his human complexity, his dignity and sometimes his reason.

One of the hallmarks of this episode is that whenever you feel that the Yorkshire has probed their own capacity for moral decay, they somehow manage to dig even lower. Monday morning was another such moment: According to ESPNCricinfo, a current senior Yorkshire player admitted to addressing Rafiq regularly using the P word, but was cleared by the wrongdoing investigation on the grounds that he was “unreasonable that Azeem was offended.” . Such remarks, the panel argued, fell under the banner of “good-humored jokes among friends.”

If these latest revelations tell us anything, it’s that the report commissioned by Yorkshire almost 14 months ago, dragged into a tangle of delays and obscurations, and released (in short) during the chaotic cancellation of the fifth Test between England and India, is hardly worth the USB stick on which it was downloaded. Key figures were not interviewed.

Since Rafiq first went public with his testimony in an interview on wisden.com in August 2020 – a story supported by many former teammates and staff – Yorkshire President Roger Hutton has not given a only public interview.

The sad thing is that there are still many decent, principled, dismayed people today, but very few of them in positions of real power. According to the Yorkshire Post, some senior club officials are unhappy that he has not taken a more hostile line against Rafiq.

This is a good example of how combating racism is part of a larger struggle against ingrained rights and privileges, whether it’s status or wealth, gender or relationships. The point is, all of this goes far beyond mere acts of racist abuse, what words we deem acceptable or not, or the future of individuals. It is about how institutions protect themselves and resist change, where power fits into our game and how it reproduces itself.

In 2003, when Darren Lehmann was banned for calling a Sri Lankan opponent a “black asshole” during a one-day international for Australia, his county of Yorkshire refused to take action. “You can’t say it was malicious, far from it,” said Colin Graves, the president at the time. “I am disappointed that the ICC has chosen this path. He’s not a racist. “

Case closed; ancient history. Except Graves ended up running English cricket. Lehmann ended up coaching the Deccan Chargers and Australia and this year he was back at Headingley as coach of the Northern Superchargers in the Hundred.

Imagine all the colored cricketers who played under them, the staff who owed them their livelihood, the young people who took the paths they controlled. Imagine how little power they had and how much Graves and Lehmann enjoyed in comparison. It is institutional racism in action.

Yorkshire has acted disgracefully, but they did not act alone. England’s senior white players continue to avoid discussing racism out of disgust. The England and Wales Cricket Council, which now does its own investigations, spent years turning a blind eye to racism in the English game before finally deciding in 2020 that there could be a good relationship public in all this George Floyd stuff.

Even now, with his T-shirt gadgets and a communications department larger than the coaching staff in many countries, he gives the impression of a body less concerned with improving the game than being able to say that it improved the game.

As another month passes, Rafiq continues to wait for justice. He was truly a very decent pitcher in his prime, a smart spinner with subtle flight changes and underrated hitting technique, an English Under-19 captain who, with a little love and little luck, could easily have become an international cricketer.

He is still only 30 years old. And yet, right now, her defining legacy in the game is that of a victim of someone else’s racism. In a crowded field, this might just be the greatest injustice of all.

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