Azeem Rafiq has reached a six- figure settlement with Yorkshire to end his employment tribunal claim and immediately called for the club’s chief executive Mark Arthur and director of cricket Martyn Moxon to resign.
Incoming Yorkshire chair Lord Patel revealed he spent more than six hours talking to Rafiq on Sunday and had since settled at around £200,000. He waived a non-disclosure agreement, criticising its inclusion in a previous club offer to the former England Under 19 captain.
Rafiq said: ‘I want to thank Lord Patel for making the offer and sorting this out within 72 hours of his appointment.
Azeem Rafiq has reached a £200,000 settlement with Yorkshire to end his employment tribunal claim
Incoming Yorkshire chair Lord Patel apologised to Rafiq and his family three days after taking the role
‘It should not have taken the rest of the club a year to realise I would not be silenced. I will continue to campaign against institutional racism and look forward to speaking at the select committee hearing next week. I urge others who have suffered to come forward. There is strength in numbers and I will be right behind you.’
Rafiq, praised by Lord Patel as a whistleblower who had forced Yorkshire into ‘seismic change’, will be able to speak freely on his experiences of racism during his two spells as a player at Headingley — including at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport hearing a week today.
The 30-year-old added: ‘Mark Arthur, Martyn Moxon and many of those on the coaching staff have been part of the problem. They have consistently failed to take responsibility for what happened on their watch and must go.
‘I urge them to do the right thing and resign to make way for those who will do what is needed for the club’s future.’
Lord Patel, 61, confirmed that the pair were still running the crisis-hit club’s day-to-day affairs as members of the senior management team but promised a review of the executive. He left his official unveiling as successor to Roger Hutton as Yorkshire’s chair to attend talks with one of the slew of sponsors — whose number included Nike, Tetley’s and Yorkshire Tea — that walked out on the club last week.
His top priorities now are resurrecting deals, persuading other businesses to come on board and liaising with the ECB on the targets that must be met to avoid having a Test match versus New Zealand and a one-day international against South Africa next summer shifted elsewhere.
Yorkshire are £18.6million in debt and the loss of more than £6.5million — an estimate based on the sponsorship and commercial deals, plus the suspension of Tests and other England fixtures at Headingley until a time seen fit by the ECB following the botched
