The BBC was on Friday night under mounting pressure to reverse its decision to suspend Michael Vaughan after Azeem Rafiq said the “you lot” furore had been blown out of proportion.
Speaking 48 hours after the corporation axed Vaughan from its Ashes team, the man that accused him insisted “I don’t hold a grudge” against the 2005 Ashes-winning captain.
Meanwhile, Vaughan’s former England team-mate Monty Panesar became the latest figure in the sport to criticise the BBC for presiding over “a distortion of natural justice”.
Rafiq suggested on Friday the alleged 2009 comment – which Vaughan vehemently denies making – had been “made bigger” than necessary. The 30-year-old, who had been meeting a Holocaust survivor as part of efforts to make amends over his own anti-Semitic messages, added: “I’m nobody to be forgiving someone.”
Vaughan, who first revealed in Telegraph Sport column how he had been accused, has given a BBC interview which is expected to be broadcast this morning. He has already issued two strenuous denials to the allegation he said “too many of you lot, we need to do something about it” within earshot of Rafiq, Adil Rashid, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan and Ajmal Shahzad.
Naved-ul-Hasan and Rashid rallied behind Rafiq’s claim, but Vaughan claims the other seven players present in the pre-match huddle at Trent Bridge have “no recollection” of the comment.
Panesar, writing in a new column for Telegraph Sport, said the BBC had made a mistake in dropping him. “This feels deeply unethical – a classic case of someone being tried and convicted without any form of due process being undertaken,” he added.
After his bombshell appearance before MPs last week, Rafiq had appeared to call for the BBC to take action against Vaughan, who had already been temporarily stood down from his Radio 5 Live show. “People who apologise should be given a second chance, but people in denial, I think it’s important that employers send a message out to the public whether they’re going to be [given] green light,” he had told ITV.
