Road to reconciliation after Yorkshire racism saga will be long and difficult

At the end of a bruising disciplinary process undertaken to address charges of discriminatory language and behaviour at Yorkshire, the chair of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Richard Thompson, expressed his hope for peace.

“There now needs to be a time of reconciliation where, as a game, we can collectively learn and heal the wounds and ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again,” said Thompson, upon confirmation that Matthew Hoggard, Tim Bresnan, John Blain, Andrew Gale and Richard Pyrah had been found to have brought the game into disrepute, with the case against Michael Vaughan not upheld.

It is a sentiment that any right-thinking cricket lover would surely share. When Azeem Rafiq first went public with his experiences during two spells at Headingley back in August 2020, the spark of his words found dry wood and burst into flames in part because it tapped into a wider guilt about English cricket’s record on inclusivity.

A year earlier a dynamic and diverse England men’s team led by Eoin Morgan had won the Cricket World Cup. On a personal level, it was a career highlight to help Moeen Ali pen a column in the afterglow explaining how a group of players from different backgrounds had come together as one. And yet despite that golden day at Lord’s, the make-up of the professional game beneath the national side did not – and still does not – reflect the demographics of those playing it recreationally.

But if the sport’s broader acceptance of the need to address this offers some cause for optimism, the same cannot be said about the prospect of healing following in the case of this Yorkshire story. Over the course of nearly three years institutions have buckled in the search for clarity on the facts, views