The Cricketer's People of 2021: Azeem Rafiq - whistleblower, gamechanger

NICK FRIEND: Rafiq could hardly feel further from making his childhood ambitions of playing for England a reality. Instead, his legacy will be far greater than any number of runs or wickets

Cricket will change for the better because of Azeem Rafiq, whose appearance in front of a DCMS committee hearing in November will go down as one of the most significant days in the English game's recent history.

While he spoke, the sport heard him at long last. And when he had finished, others were empowered by his courage over the last 18 months to come forward with their stories.

I write this as a Jewish man, one of few working in this game, from what I have been able to gather. So I was deeply disappointed by the anti-Semitic messages that were exposed shortly afterwards and hurt by the tropes at the centre of those comments.

But in the piece I wrote in the subsequent days, I made a point that I want to re-emphasise now, at the end of this difficult year, that Rafiq's comments don't in any way delegitimise what he suffered. Neither detracts from the other. It is entirely possible to be disgusted by anti-Semitism and appalled by the institutional racism admitted in front of MPs by Roger Hutton, Yorkshire's former chairman, that drove Rafiq to the brink of suicide.

Rafiq's response to the unearthing of those screenshots was important: full ownership, no excuses, an apology followed by attempts to educate himself. He met with a Holocaust survivor and attended a synagogue tour. But those are PR stunts, I hear you say. And maybe they were. But maybe they weren't.

^{Azeem Rafiq's testimony brought huge change at Yorkshire}

We wouldn't be human if we accepted everything at face value, but what I heard was the wholesome apology of a man who knows as well as anyone what it's like to be hurt, and what it is to be in a minority.

At the time, I wrote that there had been no mea culpa of greater sincerity since this grim affair came to light. Nothing since has altered that perspective. That does not mean this episode can be forgotten or scrapped from the tapes. But, if anything, perhaps it proved his own point about the prevalence and normalisation of racism in our society.

Because, what he spelled out in page after page of evidence – and what has followed since in testimony from Maurice Chambers, Zoheb Sharif, Jahid Ahmed and more than 1,000 respondents to a survey sent out by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket – has sent a tidal wave through the sport.

Sponsors have cut ties, overdue conversations are taking place, uncomfortable questions are being asked and the national governing body is under immense scrutiny.

There have been death threats, including one from a customer at Rafiq's fish and chip shop who threatened to blow up the building

It should never have reached the point where programmes aimed at increasing diversity felt compelled to act independently. Ebony Rainford-Brent established the ACE Programme even before George Floyd’s murder last year, with a raft of statistics that shamed and embarrassed the game in this country; the South Asian Cricket Academy is in the process of its own launch.

"We are getting lots of participation at grassroots level and lots of young people are playing cricket from the south Asian community," Clive Efford MP put to Tom Harrison in the House of Commons.

"The issue we are confronting is that they are not getting through to the elite at the higher levels of cricket in Yorkshire. From what we have heard, if we looked anywhere across the cricketing hierarchy we would see the same in other counties."

Rafiq will forever be the whistleblower who inspired this major, necessary reckoning for a game that until now had convinced itself it was doing enough, that believed T-shirt slogans would suffice.

The anecdotes he shared – of having wine forced down his throat as a teenager, of the language and jibes he faced through his time at Yorkshire, of his treatment after the stillbirth of his child – are harrowing and disgusting. It is impossible to imagine the bravery required to recount those experiences at all, let alone in such a public, high-profile chamber.

^{Rafiq at the DCMS hearing in November}

People have come for him since just as they did before. Still, he faces accusations on social media of acting vindictively and seeking a payoff.

The letter signed by a group of employees at Yorkshire cast aspersions on his character, when frankly his character – whatever they thought of him– could scarcely be less relevant in the context of being racially abused. In light of the discovery of Rafiq’s own history, people have attempted to caveat that racism and to shut down a vital moment for cricket's future.

There have been death threats, including one from a customer at Rafiq's fish and chip shop who threatened to blow up the building.

It is worth remembering in all this that it was never Rafiq's intention for the list of names documented in his evidence to be made public. Culpability for that, like much in this episode, sits at the feet of Yorkshire's rank incompetence in its mishandling of the affair from the outset. The pattern of events he outlined was put together to highlight and demonstrate the institutionalisation of what he lived at the county.

"All I have ever wanted is some sort of acceptance and apology," he told MPs. "Let's work together to make sure it does not happen to my kids, and I can let my kids go and play cricket."

Because, apart from everything else, that is one of the tragedies of this case: Rafiq doesn't want his children near the game that was his love and passion. It was his dream to play cricket and his dream to play for England. He remains Yorkshire's youngest captain.

But at 30, when an off-spinner might be said to be approaching his prime, Rafiq could hardly feel further from making those childhood ambitions a reality. Instead, though, his legacy will be far greater than any runs or wickets.

The game must change. And when it does, it will look back to Azeem Rafiq.

THE CRICKETER'S PEOPLE OF 2021 (links open in external window in app)

Alice Capsey

Ben Stokes

Ian Watmore

Joe Root

Nathan Leamon