No question that Azeem Rafiq was the victim of racial harassment – Roger Hutton

England’s Yorkshire club have restated their stance that they are unable to publish the independent report into Azeem Rafiq’s allegations of racism at the club, due to issues “in relation to privacy law and defamation”, following parliamentary pressure to release its findings.

Yorkshire distributed a summary of the report and its recommendations on Friday morning, which detailed seven incidents of racial harassment and bullying of Rafiq that were upheld by the investigation. Last month, the club issued an apology to Rafiq, saying he had been “the victim of inappropriate behaviour”.

A spokesperson for Rafiq criticised Yorkshire’s “atrocious” handling of the investigation and said failure to hand over a copy of the report was “an abuse of process”.

“We note that Yorkshire County Cricket Club has confirmed Azeem was the victim of racism and bullying during his two spells at Headingley,” the spokesperson said. “However, we must highlight the atrocious way this process continues to be handled. Azeem was not given any notice of this morning’s statement – he received a copy only a couple of minutes before the media.