Vaughan denies racism as Rafiq accused of being ready to play ‘race card’

LONDON: Former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan told a hearing into accusations of racism at Yorkshire on Friday it was “inconceivable” he would make the comment attributed to him by Azeem Rafiq as his former county team-mate was accused of being ready to play the “race card.”Vaughan and a number of other former players at the county cricket club face charges related to the use of racially discriminatory language.Pakistan-born Rafiq, 32, first went public with allegations of racism and bullying in September 2020, related to his two spells at Yorkshire.Rafiq alleged Vaughan told him and three other Yorkshire players of Asian origin “there’s too many of you lot, we need to do something about it,” before a 2009 Twenty20 match between Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge.England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) lawyer Jane Mulcahy asked Vaughan at the ongoing Cricket Discipline Commission hearing in London whether the words “there’s too many of you lot” were “totally unacceptable” as well as “racist and discriminatory.”“Absolutely,” said Vaughan, 48, who in his witness statement said: “I consider it to be inconceivable that I would use the words contained in the allegation.”Rafiq’s conduct, however, was also called into question later Friday when Matthew Wood, a former personal development manager at the Professional Cricketers’ Association and an ex-Yorkshire cricketer, said in a witness statement: “In my dealings with Azeem, I was aware of two occasions in which he (directly or indirectly) acknowledged that he would be prepared to use the ‘race card’.“By that, I understood Azeem to mean that he would make, or allude to, an allegation of racism in bad faith in order to gain an advantage.”Wood’s statement also