IT’S THE CULTURE THAT COUNTS, NOT WORDS
THE biggest mistake that could be made now would be if Azeem Rafiq’s denunciations and misery were just to become another interminable debate around the nature of language. Evaluating the hurtful power of individual words, the context, what constitutes misguided banter and what is outright racism, clouds a far more important issue. That Yorkshire CCC did not think it had a problem and judging by its behaviour, still doesn’t. There were three British Asians on the panel it is claimed have presided over a whitewash. One of them, Mesba Ahmed, is vice-chairman of the National Asian Cricket Council. Their integrity does not deserve to be questioned. What can be argued is that, consistently, Yorkshire have not taken the subject of racism seriously, that they have not been sufficiently concerned by the evidence of individuals and that they have lacked the wit and empathy to understand the alienation felt within their walls. Rafiq was ignored and the process to address his complaints was nonexistent. Yorkshire officials, on the staff and the executive, lacked the education or interest in resolving the problem, and that is despicable. Worse, this failure of understanding meant they actually facilitated the atmosphere in which racially-charged language became acceptable. They couldn’t fix the problem, because they were the root of it. And some still are. The idea Colin Graves (inset, left) will return as Yorkshire chairman to save the day is laughable. In the position between 2012 and 2015, some of this has happened on his watch. And while he can’t be held responsible for every warped exchange in the closed environment of the dressing room, he can certainly be judged over what was passable at the time. Some of the words uttered within Rafiq’s earshot won’t just have been confined to the playing areas. Are we to believe the language and attitudes in the bar, or the committee rooms, did not also reflect club culture? Graves defended Darren Lehmann after an outburst charged with racial expletives during a match for Australia against Sri Lanka. Lehmann was a Yorkshire player, Graves the chief executive. ‘If the recent incident has upset or annoyed anyone concerned with cricket in general or with Yorkshire then we apologise to those people,’ said Graves. If ? One of the phrases Lehmann was accused of using was ‘black c***’. That was in 2003. Here we are 18 years later and Graves is being advanced as the figure who could rehabilitate the county from this latest crisis. Is that progress? The same guy, addressing the same problem, two decades on? The nature of banter, of language, is a side issue here. It is the institutionally racist culture of Yorkshire CCC, top to bottom,
that must change.