Lloyd dig over Sky departure

DAVID LLOYD has aimed his first public dig at former employers Sky following his bitter break-up with the broadcaster.

The much-loved pundit left his 22-year role last December after being accused by Yorkshire whistleblower Azeem Rafiq of being a ‘closet racist’.

At the time, ‘Bumble’ announced his departure himself, saying it was time to ‘move on to the next chapter’, without mentioning the outcome of Sky’s probe into his private messages about Rafiq.

But after keeping his counsel for seven months, the former England player and coach yesterday tweeted: ‘When a random, anonymous, inconsequential person who has never met you passes judgement on you, it impacts massively on your life and you certainly find out who your friends are #imstillstanding.’

While Lloyd was cryptic in his tweet, The Mail on Sunday understands he was referring to a Sky employee who was involved in the probe into his conduct.

The 75-year-old was dragged into cricket’s racism scandal last November after Rafiq’s appearance in front of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee.

Former Yorkshire spinner Rafiq claimed Lloyd attempted to ‘smear’ him in messages to a media colleague. Rafiq told MPs: ‘There were high-profile media people messaging other members of the media who supported me saying stuff like, “The clubhouses are the lifeblood of a club and Asian players don’t go in there” and “Getting subs out of Asian players is like getting blood out of stone”.

‘And then this guy is talking about my personal drinking, going out and socialising. That was David Lloyd. I found it disturbing because Sky are supposedly doing this amazing work on bringing racism to the front and within a week of me speaking out that’s what I got sent to me.

‘I thought, “Gosh, there’s some closet racists and we need to do something about it”.’

Lloyd immediately apologised to Rafiq but he was let go by Sky the following month. The closest he had come to criticising the broadcaster since was in a column for our sister paper the Daily Mail.

‘Our coverage used to be rock and roll, we were told to take risks,’ he wrote. ‘Now they have clawed things right back and it’s absolutely taboo to say anything that can be misinterpreted.’