THEY SAID ‘YOU SIT NEAR THE TOILETS’, ‘ELEPHANT WASHERS’. ‘P**I’ WAS USED CONSTANTLY. NO ONE STAMPED IT OUT
He might not remember the racist abuse, but it shows how normal it was that a good man doesn’t remember it
Ashes team. And it was just the most surreal moment for me.
‘Early on, me and other people from an Asian background… there were comments such as “You’ll sit over there near the toilets”, “elephant washers”. The word “P**i” was used constantly. And there just seemed to be an acceptance in the institution from the leaders and no one ever stamped it out.
‘All I wanted to do is play cricket, play for England, and live my dream. (Former England player) Gary Ballance would regularly make derogatory comments about my Pakistani heritage to others in front of me — “Don’t talk to him, he’s a P**i”. This happened in front of loads of people, including Joe Root. It happened in front of coaching staff.
‘It was Hoggy (Hoggard) who started calling me “Raffa the Kaffir”. At the time, I didn’t understand that it was a racist slur. It was only later I realised what “Kaffir” meant, how it was used, and that it was a racist term.
‘The comments from Hoggy towards myself and the other Asian players — Adil (Rashid), Ajmal (Shahzad) and Rana (Naved-ul-Hasan) — were on a daily basis, and all day, every day.’
He added: ‘After I made my disclosure to the media, Hoggy called me to apologise for what he had said to me. I respect him for that.’
Cataloguing the abuse, Rafiq, who is a Muslim, described how at the age of 15, he was ‘pinned down at my local cricket club and had red wine poured down my throat, literally down my throat,’ by a cricketer who played for Yorkshire and Hampshire.
Rafiq was released by Yorkshire in 2014 and felt settled, he said, when he returned under captain Alex Lees and coach Jason Gillespie.
‘Jason left in 2016 and it felt the temperature in the room had been turned up,’ Rafiq said. ‘You had Andrew Gale coming in as coach and Gary Ballance as captain. For the first time, I started to see it for what it was — I felt isolated, humiliated at times. Constant use of the word “P**i”.’
Recalling an episode during his final season of 2018, he continued:
Gale intimidated me. He called me ‘P**i’ all the time but his constant dressingdown of me in public was harder to take
‘The first day back after losing my son, (director of cricket) Martyn Moxon got me in a room and ripped shreds off me. Some of the club officials were inhuman.
‘They weren’t really bothered about the fact that I was at training one day and I get a phone call to say there’s no heartbeat… I carried him from the hospital to the graveyard. How I’m being treated here is not right.’
And he was equally critical of his treatment at the hands of another England player, Tim Bresnan.
‘Tim and Andrew Gale are related: Tim is Andrew’s brother-in-law,’ Rafiq said. ‘They always supported each other. Tim would tag along and join in with Andrew’s racist comments and they bounced off each other in terms of the bullying.
‘As with Andrew, Tim frequently
Gary called any person of colour ‘Kevin’. He would tell people in bars not to talk to me because I was a ‘P**i’
made racist comments and was unduly harsh towards me compared to white British players, which became so unbearable that I made a formal complaint against him.’
Bresnan, who won 23 Test caps, later said: ‘For any part I played in contributing to Azeem Rafiq’s experience of feeling bullied at Yorkshire, I apologise unreservedly.’
In response to England captain Root saying last week that he did not recognise a racist culture at Yorkshire, Rafiq countered: ‘Rooty is a good man. He never engaged in racist language (but) I found it hurtful because Rooty was Gary’s housemate and had been involved in a lot of the socialising where I was called a “P**i”.
‘It shows how normal it was that even a good man like him doesn’t see it for what it was. It’s not going
He was one of my heroes... I was so excited to be in the same team as him but he said: ‘There’s too many of you lot’
to affect Joe, but it’s something I remember every day.’
Rafiq claimed that Jack Brooks, a two-time County Championship winner at Yorkshire, had branded India’s Cheteshwar Pujara with the disrespectful nickname ‘Steve’ during his overseas stint at the club.
And Rafiq slammed the Professional Cricketers’ Association’s role in the initial probe into his complaints, claiming Matthew Wood, his assigned personal development manager, was working ‘for Yorkshire, with Yorkshire’.
Meanwhile, the club’s new chair, Lord Patel, said Rafiq should be praised for speaking up.
Rafiq added: ‘Action is needed now. We are sick and tired of these equity commissions and inquiries. All we are asking for is equality, to be treated fairly, regardless of the colour of our skin or the religion we follow. Just respect as a human race. It’s 2021. We shouldn’t even be having this conversation.
‘No one has ever been a whistleblower before, no one has ever had the courage to come forward because of the fear of not being believed. Do I believe I lost my career to racism? Yes, I do.
‘I’m a massive believer that everything happens for a reason. I hope, in five years’ time, we are going to see a big change. That I did something far bigger than any runs or any wickets I got.’