Michael Vaughan and his legal team have slammed the ECB, describing their racism investigation case as “wholly inadequate” and biased.
Vaughan is charged with bringing the game into disrepute by saying to Azeem Rafiq, Adil Rashid, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan and Ajmal Shahzad “there’s too many of you lot, we need to have a word about that” prior to a Twenty20 match against Nottinghamshire in June 2009.
Vaughan categorically denies the allegation, and the closing submissions from Christopher Stoner KC on behalf of the former England captain took a swipe at the way the ECB had handled the entire case, branding it unfair and claiming it denied their client “due process.”
The ECB’s legal lead, Jane Mulcahy KC, hit back at those claims, describing them as “inappropriate to be alleged”. On the final day of the Cricket Discipline Commission hearing, both sides traded blows with compelling descriptions of the evidence heard over the previous four days.
But what Vaughan described in his evidence as a “terrible look for the game”, after he and former team-mate Rafiq had fought it out in public, became an argument between an Ashes-winning captain and his former employers and governing body over accusations both parties had not being sufficiently thorough in their collection of evidence.
And Stoner pulled no punches when he said: “We say this investigation was wholly inadequate. In reality there was no investigation, and we are concerned by the bias shown by the ECB.
“Due process matters and it is the cornerstone of our law. It was sent on holiday by the ECB in this investigation. That brings a question of fairness. This was a prosecution from the outset.”
Mulcahy KC was just as robust in her summation of the ECB’s case beforehand when she focused once more on the historic tweets sent by Vaughan between 2010 and 2017, for which he has already apologised and agreed were “completely unacceptable.”
Mulcahy said: “The tweets are central to this case and it makes no difference that they were sent in a non-cricketing context. We say if a person has a tendency to make racist comments, they have a tendency to make racist comments.”
The final cases against the non-participating Andrew Gale and Richard Pyrah were also heard before the panel retired to deliberate on a verdict that is expected at the end of the month. Panel chair Tim O’Gorman said: “These are serious matters, and the panel will give them due consideration.”
