NICK FRIEND: Rafiq could hardly feel further from making his childhood ambitions of playing for England a reality. Instead, his legacy will be far greater than any number of runs or wickets
Cricket will change for the better because of Azeem Rafiq, whose appearance in front of a DCMS committee hearing in November will go down as one of the most significant days in the English game's recent history.
While he spoke, the sport heard him at long last. And when he had finished, others were empowered by his courage over the last 18 months to come forward with their stories.
I write this as a Jewish man, one of few working in this game, from what I have been able to gather. So I was deeply disappointed by the anti-Semitic messages that were exposed shortly afterwards and hurt by the tropes at the centre of those comments.
But in the piece I wrote in the subsequent days, I made a point that I want to re-emphasise now, at the end of this difficult year, that Rafiq's comments don't in any way delegitimise what he suffered. Neither detracts from the other. It is entirely possible to be disgusted by anti-Semitism and appalled by the institutional racism admitted in front of MPs by Roger Hutton, Yorkshire's former chairman, that drove Rafiq to the brink of suicide.
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