Azeem Rafiq, Race, Root and Roses

Like most sports, cricket needs to make its headlines on the pitch. While England threatened to win the World T20 in Dubai, the UK media seemed happy to oblige. As long as Jos Buttler was racking up the runs, and Chris Woakes and Mark Wood taking wickets, all seemed well. Then came Jimmy Neesham and Tim Southee and it all fell apart. 

By the time Australia were crowned champions and New Zealand came to terms with another defeat in a final, the Press had moved on to more serious matters away from the wicket. And they don’t come much more serious than Azeem Rafiq’s allegations of racism against Yorkshire. 

His county cricket career over, he has been brave to stick his head above the parapet and tell it as it is. Yorkshire’s attempted cover-up, Gary Ballance’s unacceptable ‘banter’ and Joe Root’s ‘hear no evil, see no evil, let’s talk about the Ashes instead’ attitude have done cricket no favours whatsoever and now former players at other counties have also felt emboldened to blow the whistle on racist comments made by county executives. It’s no longer just a White Rose problem. 

The ECB and Yorkshire’s sponsors have hit the county where it hurts but where will it end? Azeem Rafiq’s comments about “institutionalised racism” seem increasingly justified, which makes me angry given we’re in the 2020s, not the 1970s. In the Nineties, black cricketers seemed to be consigning ancient attitudes towards race to history, with the likes of Small, Lewis, Butcher, Cowans, Malcolm , Lawrence et al breaking into the elite. English Asians took a bit longer but Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid, Monty Panesar, Samit Patel, Ravi Bopara and others have since made their mark. And yet they have been sometimes badly treated, too. 

Azeem Rafiq’s appearance before the Parliamentary committee yesterday promoted the issue of racism in cricket to the main story on the Six o’Clock News and things are now getting brutally ugly and personal. Ballance, Michael Vaughan and Tim Bresnan have all been forced to deny making derogatory comments to players of Asian descent. Someone is lying. Does Rafiq have an alternative agenda, aiming lethal barbs at former Yorkshire colleagues out of sheer spite? It seems unlikely. Which means those colleagues are lying to save their skins, reputations and lucrative contracts. Ouch! Nasty business. 

I daresay many people will just get on the anti-Woke bandwagon and lump Rafiq’s allegations in with statue-toppling and knee-taking but they need to be heard, and acted upon, if casual racism is to be eradicated and treated as wrong instead of normal practice. Let the guilty be punished before the ex-spinner is forgotten. If the ECB wants the headlines to concern the Ashes, the momentum must not be lost.

Lyth Smashes T20 Record

The Nat West T20 Blast’s group stage ended in dramatic style this week. On Thursday, Northamptonshire’s reign as champions effectively ended as Yorkshire mercilessly destroyed them at Headingley. Azeem Rafiq claimed 5-19 to dismiss the Steelbacks for 136 with a quarter of their overs remaining. But the true damage had already been done. Opener Adam Lyth, not renowned for his white ball striking, achieved the highest ever score in English T20, plundering 161 in 73 balls. Only two men have ever beaten that including Chris Gayle. Lyth easily outscored the opponents on his own. I feel sorry for the Northants seamers Sanderson and Gleeson, whose decent seasons came to a sorry finale conceding a whopping 138 runs between them.

And yet, despite the boost to their runs rate, Yorkshire still failed to qualify for the quarter-finals. Nottinghamshire finished top of the North division despite losing to Leicestershire by two runs at Trent Bridge on the final day. That result, together with Birmingham’s similarly narrow win over Lancashire, ensured that Lyth’s mammoth innings would be his last in the 2017 competition.

Derbyshire also lost to Leicestershire but their last-week triumphs against the bottom two took them to second in the final table. Wayne Madsen’s consistent Powerplay bowling and a 4-17 from Imran Tahir proved decisive. Can they and Leicester make up for a dour, depressing Championship season by making Finals Day?

The South group qualification went down to the wire on Friday evening. Glamorgan were already assured of proceeding and would still have clinched a home quarter-final even if they hadn’t beaten Middlesex in the rain-shortened fixture. The winner of the Surrey-Kent encounter at Canterbury was assured of going through, and it was the Londoners wot won it thanks to Jason Roy’s 78 and Rikki Clarke’s 4-16. The previous day, Kent had set another domestic T20 record, with Denly (127) and Bell-Drummond (80) compiling a 201-run first-wicket partnership.

Hampshire were safely through but the fourth place was eventually decided by an extremely narrow net run rate margin. Both Somerset and Sussex crushed their last-night opposition, Hants and Essex, but it was the 98-run success at the Rose Bowl which handed Somerset qualification, thanks to key contributions by Trego, Myburgh, Waller, van der Merwe and the redoubtable Craig Overton.

And so to next week’s quarter-finals. Somerset’s reward is a trip to Trent Bridge where they must hope that Hales Wessels and Patel all have off days. Derbyshire host Hampshire and Surrey visit Edgbaston, while the second tier Championship counties Leicestershire and Glamorgan meet in Cardiff. The last three are impossible to call, but I reckon Notts Outlaws will definitely rob the sheriffs of Taunton of a place in the Finals.

Team of the Week: Lyth (Yor), Denly (Ken), Bell-Drummond (Ken), Cosgrove (Lei), Buttler (Lan +), Trego (Som), Clarke (Sur), S Curran (Sur), Azeem Rafiq (Yor), Imran Tahir (Der), Finn (Mid)