[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Michael Vaughan now implicated in using racial slurs. Rafiq seems to be taking a position that he doesn't want this to become about individuals, but the wider dressing-room culture and the institutional mechanisms for dealing with complaints. That may well be in response to Ballance's statement about the two of them remaining friends long after the drunken "banter" incident; reading between the lines, I guess Rafiq's saying that he considers that case to be an example of the kind of culture that's fostered at the club, rather than something he wants Ballance to be personally dragged over the coals for. Nevertheless, Ballance has been suspended pending investigation.

Another fresh allegation is that in a match featuring Rafiq, Adil Rashid, Ajmal Shahzad and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, one teammate remarked as they took the field, "There's too many of you lot. We need to have a word about that." Again, impossible to tell from the words alone whether it was meant as humour or not, but it's a catastrophically dodgy thing to say even as a joke, and obviously downright racist if it was meant seriously. The player in question is still anonymous as far as I know, but it's looking worse and worse for Yorkshire by the day.

EDITED TO ADD: It is, in fact, Michael Vaughan who's alleged to have made the "too many of you lot" comment. He emphatically denies it.