Who will take the knee for cricketers of colour?

I have just come out from watching on TV a session of the DCMS Select Committee taking evidence on racism at Yorkshire Cricket Club. Principal witness Azeem Rafiq came close to breaking down several times during his moving testimony. Chair Julian Knight eventually granted him a five-minute break, at which point I broke off to record these immediate thoughts. 

Rafiq professed himself a proud Yorkshireman, in spite of having been born in Pakistan. When he first broke through into first-team cricket he had the support of the then captain and of the coach, Jason Gillespie. There was an undercurrent of racism, but Rafiq did not realise how serious it was to become. Later captains and coaches were racially prejudiced. When Gary Ballance came to Yorkshire from Derbyshire, Rafiq felt some sympathy as a fellow-outsider and for a time they formed a bond. Later Ballance was to become one of Rafiq's chief tormentors. Two events seemed to be key. 

Rafiq had built up some standing within the club when he and a number of fellow-players felt that Tim Bresnan was a bully and that his behaviour had gone so far that a complaint had to be made to the Committee. Minutes of meetings, recently made available in evidence, reveal that Rafiq was singled out as the complainant and that from being regarded hitherto as a future leader he was thereafter seen as a trouble-maker.

The other, and probably significant, turning-point was Rafiq's treatment after the death of his infant son. He noted how the club had gone above and beyond in supporting fellow-players who had gone through similar distressing personal tragedies. By contrast, the harassment of Rafiq if anything got worse when he returned after his loss.

A disturbing part of his testimony was his observation that things were no different in other county clubs. For instance, former Lancashire captain and later TV pundit David Lloyd was revealed as a closet racist.

One thinks back to the days of the Khans as captains of county cricket clubs. First Majid at Glamorgan and later Imran (now Pakistan prime minister) at Sussex appeared untouched by racism or Islamophobia. Partly this must be because both were scions of leading families back in Pakistan and carried an air of untouchability if not noblesse. But, partly, the 1970s through to the 1990s now seem to be a high point of inclusivity, in the top level of cricket at least.

A Yorkshire work colleague back in the 1980s explained the dearth of players from a sub-continental background in Yorkshire on economic grounds. Most local clubs, he said, relied largely on members with cars to get to away matches and car ownership in the Asian community was low. That is no longer true, and players of talent fill the county academies - but somehow few make it up to the professional level.

The appointment by Yorkshire Cricket as its new chairman of the consensual Lord Patel is an excellent move and one trusts he will effect changes in organisation, and, what is more difficult, attitudes at the club. Other county clubs clearly need to review their own situation with regard to players of colour.