Azeem Rafiq’s case against Yorkshire has changed cricket – and there is more to come

One sign of how the Azeem Rafiq case has affected cricket is that during England’s triumphant tour to Pakistan the players were going through mandatory diversity training when on previous trips they would have spent their time worrying about how to play on spinning pitches.

Online courses offering multiple choice questions such as what is the difference between equity and equality, views on race and gender and how they affect issues like selection were being answered by the players as they romped to a 3-0 whitewash.

Some were picked at random for one-on-one interviews with modulators to ensure the tests were being completed properly. All passed. It was the final phase of a game-wide review of dressing-room culture that followed Rafiq’s evidence to the DCMS committee.

The training was delivered by EY Lane 4, whose stated purpose on their website is ‘democratise workplaces’, and are one of a long line of management consultants, legal firms and PR experts that have descended on cricket at the cost of many millions of pounds over the last two years.

The Professional Cricketers’ Association, under scrutiny for its response to Rafiq, has appointed ‘Inclusion Champions’, former cricketers who can speak of their own experiences and be a point of contact for players with concerns, and their first Equality, Diversity and Inclusion director, Olympian Donna Fraser. One inclusion champion is David Burton, who played for a string of counties without ever breaking through and told Telegraph Sport two years ago that “a lot of people said the system was racist.”

The fallout is being felt at grassroots too, expansive new Equity Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) measures falling on overstretched volunteers who keep clubs running.

EDI is dominating the board’s thinking as it looks to repair its public image. Richard Gould’s first email to the counties upon taking up his role as chief executive spoke of diversity being the No 1 challenge. “We are resolute in our determination to repair this damage…take whatever further action is needed and build cricket into the powerful force for good we all know it can be,’ he wrote. On his first day as ECB chairman, Richard Thompson, wrote in the first sentence of his blog on the board’s website that his aim was to turn cricket into the “UK’s most inclusive sport.”

It is against this backdrop that the Rafiq hearings will begin. They will be incendiary and a story that is the most toxic to hit the sport will become more poisonous as accusations are traded.

It will be swiftly followed by a report from the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket, that has gathered thousands of pieces of allegations of racism, sexism and classism over the past year. Its chair, Cindy Butts, warned almost a year ago the sport is facing “a reckoning.” The cost of the commission has not been revealed publicly but will be considerable and the game is bracing itself for being termed institutionally racist.

The report is complete and the ECB will be given only 24 hours notice before publication to respond. Its findings will threaten further government action, a withholding of public money and the potential desertion of sponsors.

For many it will paint a picture of a sport they do not recognise, both at professional and amateur level and threatens a culture war within a game that is played in all communities, across race and religious divides. It will define the Thompson-Gould era.

At the offices of a dispute resolution’s company in central London this week, the personal element of this story will play out as the Cricket Disciplinary commission sits for four days of evidence.

The effect of the allegations by Rafiq have been devastating on individual lives, including his own, and for Yorkshire. Rafiq moved overseas citing abuse he has received and police are still hunting a man who defecated in his garden. Yorkshire staff at the club when Rafiq appeared at DCMS received death threats, Gary Ballance has emigrated to Zimbabwe and almost all those he has accused have lost their livelihoods in cricket.

Michael Vaughan still writes for this newspaper and his employers in Australia, Fox, have stood by him too but he has not worked for the BBC since he was charged in July.

Vaughan vehemently denies that he made the comment alleged by Rafiq (“there’s too many of you lot, we need to do something about it”) before a T20 game at Trent Bridge 14 years ago and will vociferously defend himself.

Adil Rashid, the England leg-spinner, has backed up Rafiq’s claims and given a statement to the tribunal. He has refused to return from Bangladesh to give evidence in person and will appear via video link  Rana Naved-Ul-Hasan, the Pakistan bowler who was also present that day, backed up Rafiq’s claims to a journalist – although without a direct quote – but has not provided a witness statement to the tribunal.

Vaughan underwent diversity training and apologised in a BBC interview for historical tweets.

The fight to clear his name has taken a toll on him personally and left him bitter about his treatment by the ECB, an organisation he worked for as a centrally contracted player for nearly a decade and enriched as captain when he won the greatest Ashes series of all.

His case will expose further the fault lines in the investigation, which will increase questions about the board’s role as promoter and regulator of its sport and the conflict of interest that causes.

Vaughan is the only defendant still taking part in the process. Publicly he has received backing from Monty Panesar, the most high profile English Asian cricketer of his generation. “I have already said that I absolutely do not believe Michael Vaughan is racist. He was my captain when I played for England and I only experienced positive things with him,” he said last year.

Ajmal Shahzad, who was part of the team huddle and one of the four Asians to play for Yorkshire the day Vaughan is alleged to have made the comment, said he did not hear it and when interviewed by the ECB’s investigators he said “he wasn’t that way inclined, you know, he definitely wasn’t. He wasn’t that way inclined,” when asked if he heard Vaughan make racist comments.

Ballance pleaded guilty, others individuals have walked away, labelling the cricket disciplinary commission a kangaroo court with a predetermined outcome; saying the board does not care about natural justice or due process in the rush to vindicate Rafiq and assuage political pressure. A shake up of the CDC is inevitable when this is all over.  It needs to happen fast too because there are other investigations at Essex and Surrey ongoing.

For Yorkshire the crisis has cost millions and left them virtually penniless, facing a points deduction and the club hollowed out. Lord Patel’s decision to sack 16 employees who signed a joint letter to the board complaining about the club’s handling of the case led to a string of unfair dismissal payouts – some estimates place the cost at £1.9 million – and increased bitterness between the two sides.

The issue has become binary which is why it has been so corrosive. Those who support Rafiq warn about ‘being on the right side of history’, the implication being that if you do not support him you are a racist, or enabling discrimination. In this era, that has silenced many who felt uneasy about the rigour applied to investigating his claims.

Politicians who know little and care even less about cricket heaped pressure on administrators to act after Rafiq’s compelling testimony to a DCMS committee at the same time rubbishing Yorkshire’s initial inquiry into Rafiq’s allegations but then holding up the parts that upheld his claims as proof of wrongdoing.

Rafiq deserved better from both his employer, Yorkshire, and the game’s governing body than two derided investigations. His allegations were so serious that the truth had to be established by an independent committee of investigators and their case presented to the CDC this week for examination, instead of it being left to the ECB’s own legal department to establish a case at a time when the governing body was under immense political and public pressure to act.