On the face of it, it seemed the most startling irony. Azeem Rafiq, the former Yorkshire spin bowler who has been giving tearful evidence to a select committee about racism at the club, was found to have made racist remarks himself. Well, anti-Semitic remarks. Which is just as serious, right?
In the eyes of many, it was a case of pot and kettle. Here was a man making a very public display of his victimhood, who seemingly felt it was OK to mete out the same treatment to others. #Hypocrite, they cried. #Humbug.
But not in the eyes of the media and liberal commentariat. With almost no exceptions, reports focussed on the apology that Mr Rafiq gave and the fact that his anti-Semitism was only ‘historic’. From one newspaper to the next, before the facts were even known, the tone was notably generous and forgiving. Why?
When I discussed the matter on a television debate last night, I was taken aback when a fellow panellist made excuses for the cricketer — he was 19 years old at the time, these were surely ‘off-the-cuff’ remarks, that sort of thing — when the very same commentator, on the very same programme a couple of weeks previously, had refused to afford that same generosity to those who had allegedly abused Mr Rafiq.
In truth, we simply don’t know what happened. I spoke to the cricketer on the phone after I came off air. He was distraught and apologised profusely to both me and my community. He had made the anti-Semitic comments about a non-Jewish player, Atif Sheikh, he said, whom he had been criticising for not paying a dinner bill (‘Hahaha he is a Jew… Only Jews do that sort of shit’).
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