Adil Rashid denies feeling stress to substantiate Michael Vaughan’s ‘you lot’ remark

Rashid, who’s at present on tour with England’s white-ball squad in Bangladesh, joined the Cricket Discipline Commission listening to in London through Zoom on Thursday, the place he was cross-examined for 80 minutes by Vaughan’s authorized group, led by Christopher Stoner KC.

Vaughan, who had himself been as a result of give proof however is now anticipated to seem on Friday, is the one considered one of seven former Yorkshire gamers – together with two fellow Ashes-winners in Matthew Hoggard and Tim Bresnan – prepared to reply fees that he, and the membership as an entire, breached ECB Directive 3.3 in bringing the sport into disrepute.

Vaughan categorically denies Rafiq’s declare – first made in an interview with Wisden.com in 2020 and subsequently repeated on the DCMS parliamentary hearings in November 2021 – that he had informed the 4 Asian gamers in Yorkshire’s group (Rafiq, Rashid, Ajmal Shahzad and Pakistan’s Rana Naved-ul-Hasan) that “there are too many of you lot, we need to have a word about that.”

In the course of his cross-examination, Rashid informed Mr Stoner that he remembered Vaughan making the remark because the group took the sphere for a Twenty20 Cup fixture in opposition to Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge on June 22, 2009, however insisted that he had not thought of it to be racist on the time, fairly a “poor attempt at humour”.

The actual wording of the comment got here beneath scrutiny from Vaughan’s group, with Rafiq himself admitting beneath his personal cross-examination later within the day that he had made a “clear mistake” in his witness assertion, the place he had initially remembered the phrases as “there’s too many of you lot, we need to do something about it“.

Rashid was additionally requested about two different witness statements submitted to the listening to, from his former team-mate Shahzad – who was on the sphere on the time of the alleged comment however has not corroborated it – and Liz Neto, a former HR supervisor at Yorkshire.

Both statements recommended that Rashid had been coerced into talking out in opposition to Vaughan, with Shahzad claiming that the pair had spoken in December and that Rashid was “very uncomfortable with where this was going”.

“He wanted to nip it in the bud sooner rather than later because quite frankly he was uncomfortable with how much Rafiq knew about Adil,” Shahzad’s assertion learn. “And that at some point [Rafiq] was capable of, you know, using something that he knew about [Rashid] personally against him.”

Neto, in the meantime, claimed that Rashid had phoned her “on more than one occasion … when the media furore was at its zenith.

“He appeared distressed and indicated to me he was being pressured to corroborate allegations of racism then being made regardless that he didn’t wish to.

“He said to me that he could not remember the particular comment he was being asked to say he witnessed, nor anything racist being said in his presence. He said to me he had told Mr Rafiq, ‘No matter how many times you tell me I heard it, Azeem, I cannot remember hearing it.’ “

Rashid denied each variations of occasions.

He was additionally quizzed about his personal witness assertion, which outlined particulars of a fish-and-chip-shop enterprise that Rashid and Rafiq had entered into “between October 2021 and October 2022”. Asked if this might have been a think about any coercion, Rashid described himself as a “silent partner” within the association, including that he had not sought to recoup his funding when the enterprise folded.

“I am not supporting Azeem because he is a friend or because of any shared business interest,” Rashid stated. “I am giving evidence based on what I had heard.”

Mr Stoner additionally referenced an announcement that Rafiq had given to Yorkshire’s authentic investigation into his claims of institutional racism on the membership, as carried out by the regulation agency Squire Patton Boggs. In that, Rafiq admitted that Rashid had not remembered Vaughan’s alleged remark, including “Adil has had a loss of memory . . . God bless him”. Again, Rashid denied that model of occasions.

Later within the day, Rafiq was pressed on his long-term relationship with Yorkshire – particularly a pair of incidents early in his profession, when he was censured in 2010 for an outburst on Twitter in opposition to his then England-Under 19 coach, John Abraham, and likewise for his position in 2008 in an deserted T20 quarter-final in opposition to Durham, after it was found that, as a Pakistan-born participant, he had been incorrectly registered with the membership.

The latter incident, he says, led to questions “about whether I was an illegal immigrant,” and he disagreed with recommendations that Yorkshire had accepted duty. “It caused press intrusion and I missed some crucial cricket for my development.”

The listening to continues.