A rancid melody has been directed at Azeem Rafiq but he’s not the only target

On the evening of 5 October last year, a man approached a house in Barnsley with a mobile phone in one hand and some toilet rolls in the other. According to written testimony submitted to a parliamentary inquiry, the man circled the house for several minutes talking into his phone, before walking into the garden and taking a dump.

Then there was the bloke who stalked the house late at night carrying what looked like a length of chain. People shouting abuse through shop windows and car windows. Guys sliding into his messages to call him a “lying little scum”, a “fucking piece of shit”, a “Paki rat”, threatening to destroy his family business. The many times he has walked down the streets of his home town and wondered whether this is the day someone finally makes good on their promise of violence.

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Azeem Rafiq has always insisted this was never about him. That his tragic tale was just one brushstroke on a much broader canvas. That those who wronged him were operating within a structure of power spoken and power unspoken. Stop looking at me, he told us, look at the whole picture. Stop hunting down individuals, he pleaded, hunt down the system that enabled them. Fourteen months ago, the world watched and listened to Rafiq as he wept on live television. It then proceeded to ignore almost every single thing he said.

Fourteen months in which the world moved on. Gary Ballance has moved across the world to make a fresh start playing for Zimbabwe. Tom Harrison has just landed himself a new job as the head of Six Nations Rugby. With a few notable exceptions, the journalists and broadcasters who made Rafiq the biggest news story in the country for a couple of days took their likes and their listeners and hopped on to fresh pastures.

And Rafiq? Let’s charitably call it a mixed bag. His sudden fame brought him opportunities and platforms that would never otherwise have been available to him: invitations to events, invitations to speak, prizes and praise. Then again, he has had virtually his entire past publicly raked over, now travels with a security detail and has been forced to leave the country as a result of the numerous threats to his security.

When you hear him speak there is a kind of resignation to him: the empty desperation of a guy who has no choice but to keep making himself a target. If it were just a few fringe lunatics, he could probably understand it as the price of doing business. Except this is the sharp end of a series of stories being run by some of the country’s biggest newspapers. As Rafiq put it during his most recent appearance before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee: “Every time there is an article it has created a wave of online abuse.”

The past week brought a few more. One in the Mail casting aspersions on the role of the England and Wales Cricket Board in its forthcoming racism hearing. One in the Telegraph disclosing accusations from former teammate Ajmal Shahzad of Rafiq’s “hard-partying, drinking and smoking”. One in the Yorkshire Post reporting that Adil Rashid may have been “pressurised” into supporting Rafiq’s claim against the former England captain Michael Vaughan.

It has been like this most weeks: a collage of accusations whose effect has been to paint a flawed man in the worst light. There have been extremely serious claims of sexual harassment, of antisemitism and homophobia, that Rafiq has only partially addressed but says are untrue.

In an ideal world it would be possible to see only enlightened motives in the actions of Rafiq’s critics. Perhaps the man defecating in Rafiq’s garden was aggrieved at his antisemitic Facebook post and had symbolically chosen the Jewish festival of Yom Kippur to make his protest.

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We should probably withhold the benefit of the doubt. Mercilessly discrediting the accuser, after all, is the default tactic of right-wing media the world over. Anybody who accused Rafiq of fabricating his experiences in November 2021 would have been shooed out of the room. So his detractors played the long game. An antisemitic Facebook post. OK, now can we claim he was lying? But he had gambling debts. How about now? But he was late repaying a coaching grant from Sport England. But he partied hard. How about now?

Over time, the original injustices have receded further from the memory, obscured by a web of disinformation and distraction, complexity and fatigue, from which many ordinary cricket fans have long since tuned out. Play the same tune over and over and even the most rancid melody will worm its way into the brain.

Rafiq, for his part, has had his life ruined for a second time. None of this was accidental, nor was it directed squarely at him. There are, after all, other potential whistleblowers out there, each with their own stories, each privately weighing up the costs and benefits of coming forward.

Every week, the system of privilege and white supremacy they seek to overturn whispers quietly to them. See that? See what we did with the lad from Yorkshire? We can do that to you too. Old social media posts. Ex-teammates. Everyone with a story. How much do you really want this? Shhh. There’s a good lad.