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Former Yorkshire cricket player slams club for handling of Rafiq allegations

Ryan Denton
Ex-player Kyrone says the Yorkshire CCC chairman was right to resign.

Former Yorkshire CCC player Kyrone Cooper has spoken out today against the club’s board of directors over their failure to identify and prevent numerous incidents of racist abuse towards another one of their former players Azeem Rafiq.

He stated: “They’ve handled the situation poorly and if they can’t stop racism, which is one of the biggest problems in the world right now, then I don’t think that they should be in the job”.

This comes after severe widespread criticism for Yorkshire CCC’s disappointing reaction to the allegations which has seen the club lose many of its sponsors and even its kit supplier Nike.

The ECB have released a statement on the matter and they have acted by suspending YCCC from hosting big matches at Headingley Cricket Stadium for the foreseeable future.

Yorkshire CCC chairman Roger Hutton has today resigned from his post following the backlash from allegations of racism from former Yorkshire player Azeem Rafiq, and Kyrone believes this was the right move.

“I think Yorkshire just need to clamp down on it altogether and just make sure that it’s not happening. Maybe educate the players on things what they can and can’t say”.

Cooper, 21, played for the Yorkshire academy youth teams up until under 18 level but he said he never experienced any racial abuse towards himself and he expressed his surprise at the nature of the allegations.

“No, I never got any racist abuse towards me personally. I didn’t see any either. I didn’t think there was much of it going on whilst I was there, but I’m shocked to see what’s happening now and everything with it – it’s really bad”

“Yeah I’m very surprised. I didn’t think Yorkshire were like that at all. I’ve never seen anything like that in the past with them”

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