Two former chairmen at Yorkshire County Cricket Club have been blasted by the head of the Professional Cricketers' Association (PCA) over their failure to co-operate with the probe into a culture of racism at the club.
Roger Hutton and Robin Smith – the two most recent chairmen at the club before current incumbent Lord Patel – are accused of blocking the progress of an investigation into claims of racist abuse made by Azeem Rafiq.
At a meeting of a Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, PCA non-executive chairman Julian Metherell said the body had made "a number of" attempts to contact Hutton while he was chair.
When Hutton did eventually engage in conversation, Metherell claimed he provided "nothing that was in any way helpful".
Meanwhile, Metherell also criticised Smith for an interview with the Yorkshire Post last week, in which he claimed the reforms Lord Patel has introduced since becoming chairman are "not valid".
The PCA chair described those claims as "abhorrent and totally obstructive".
"I personally tried to contact Mr Hutton on a number of occasions, both by email and telephone," Metherell told MPs.
"Those calls and those emails went unanswered until I sent a note to Mr Hutton to say we were under increasing pressure to comment and we would be forced to go public and say Yorkshire were not returning any of our calls.
"Mr Hutton did then get back to me, but nothing we received from Yorkshire at that time was in any way helpful. One of our failings at the PCA is we placed far too much confidence in Yorkshire and the ECB."
The PCA was called to speak at the hearing after their reaction to Rafiq's allegations, made at an earlier DMCS hearing, were described by the former Yorkshire spinner as "incredibly inept".
The association's chief executive Rob Lynch, who also spoke at the hearing, admitted that the union "got it wrong".
"We had some failings and have learnt a lot of lessons," he said. "We applaud Azeem for his courage and bravery for being a whistleblower to create the necessary change within the game.
"The PCA have offered support to Azeem throughout his career but clearly in this dispute with Yorkshire we did not meet the standards we would have wished to.
"We have apologised to him for where we went wrong. We have listened to Azeem about the issues in the game and what can be done better, and a number of changes have been introduced."
Metherell went on to say the PCA would be consulting Rafiq for a code of conduct it plans to draw up, surrounding discrimination.
"There is a clear code of conduct on gambling and drugs, and it is zero tolerance," he added. "We don’t have that today on discrimination.
"We have to have that, and that is something we look forward to working with Azeem on in the near future."
Rafiq watched the hearing, and took to Twitter afterwards to praise Metherell for the way he had spoken and conducted himself during proceedings.
"Watching today’s session has been a refreshing experience," he wrote.
"To hear someone in the game show leadership in the manner Julian Metherell has gives me some hope for the future. He’s clearly someone that should be considered heavily for the ECB chairman’s role."
