What did Michael Vaughan do wrong?

Is Michael Vaughan a racist? I hope not. Certainly, referring to Asian cricketers as ‘you lot’, as he is accused of doing – and which he strongly denies saying – would suggest he is. Or, at the very least, that in the past he has been guilty of being egregiously politically incorrect.

I’ve met Vaughan several times and once sat next to him on a flight from Abu Dhabi to London. On each occasion I was struck by his openness, and by his enthusiastic and enquiring nature. He certainly didn’t seem a racist to me – the opposite, in fact – but perhaps he was just very good at hiding it. Who knows?

In his several hours of, at times, tearful testimony in Parliament yesterday before the department for culture, media and sport committee, former Yorkshire cricket captain Azeem Rafiq spoke at length about his experience of racism at the club.