Former Cumberland Minor Counties professional David Lloyd has issued an apology to Azeem Rafiq amidst the latest developments over the Yorkshire racism allegations.
Rafiz gave a long and emotional testimony in Westminster to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select committee.
During it, he claimed that Lloyd, 74, tried to smear him in an attempt to suppress his allegations of racism at Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
“I sat in front of national TV and talked about the dark places this whole episode has got me into and what’s happened since then? Denial, briefings, cover-ups, smearing.
“High-profile media people messaging other members of the media who supported me saying stuff like ‘the clubhouses are the lifeblood of a club and Asian players don’t go in there’, ‘getting subs out of Asian players is like getting blood out of stone’.
“And then personally this guy doesn’t even know me, has never spent any time with me, is talking about my personal drinking, going out and socialising.
“That was David Lloyd, he’s been an England coach, commentator, and I found it disturbing because Sky are supposedly doing this amazing work on bringing racism to the front and within a week of me speaking out that’s what I got sent to me. And I thought, “Gosh, there’s some closet racists and we need to do something about it”.’
Later Lloyd, now a popular Sky Sports commentator, released a statement on his Twitter account later on Tuesday, apologising to the wider Asian cricket community for his comments.
He wrote: “In October 2020, I had a private message exchange with a third party involved in cricket, about a number of topics.
“In these messages, I referred to allegations about Azeem Rafiq which I had heard from within the game. I also made some comments about the Asian cricket community.
“I deeply regret my actions, and I apologise most sincerely to Azeem and to the Asian cricket community for doing this, and for any offence caused.”
Lloyd, who was capped nine times by England, played County Championship cricket for Lancashire from 1965 to 1983.
He then joined Cumberland and played from 1984 to 1989 in the Minor Counties and scored over 1,000 runs in 20 games and took 52 wickets.
