Azeem Rafiq, the former Yorkshire cricketer has been in a racism-related fight with the Country club for almost a month now. As the investigation continues and grows deeper, more and more cases of racial abuse and unnatural behaviour on the basis of skin colour have begun to come up.

Recently, Rafiq also opened up about how the Indian Test cricket maestro Cheteshwar Pujara had also faced discrimination while playing county cricket in England and was “given” an English name simply because they found it too difficult to call him by his real first name.

EXC: Michael Vaughan accused of “denying the truth” by former Yorkshire team-mate Rana Naved, he asks: “Why is he denying Rafiq’s claims?” and says there are “lots of racists at Yorkshire”
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“Once I left the club, Cheteshwar Pujara joined the club, and Jack Brooks I think started it where he didn’t feel the need to call him by his first name,” Rafiq said during his testimony to the parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on Tuesday.

"Not only Jack, the coaches, the media, Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire website, Yorkshire twitter page, commentators around the world, and some high profile people, everyone called him that. It just shows again, back to what the institutional failings and what that environment showed people how they could behave”, he exclaimed.

The alleged victim has also expressed that some of the players in the team also gave the name “Kevin” to their teammates of colour and that it was used around in the dressing room as a form of a joke, even when it was at the cost of someone else and their sentiments.

"Everyone called (India's Cheteshwar Pujara, 'Steve'), high-profile players around the world, and it shows the institutional failings. 'Kevin' was something Gary used for people of colour in a derogatory manner… Gary and Alex Hales got close to each other playing for England but I understand Alex went on to name his dog Kevin because it was black. It is disgusting how much of a joke it became," revealed Rafiq.

On multiple occasions, Pujara has spoken about the name that was given to him during his time in Yorkshire and how he would have preferred that his teammates use his real name. However, he didn’t say anything because he wanted to make cricketers around him comfortable.

“Well I would prefer Cheteshwar, but it is difficult to pronounce so the guys have come up with Steve. Jack Brooks started off with this. He could not pronounce my first name so he was asking me what nickname do I have. I said I don’t have any and so they said, ‘we will start calling you Steve’,” Pujara had told cricket.com.au in 2018.

“So they said, ‘We will start calling you Steve’. Initially, they started calling me “Puj”, but they have started calling me Steve again. It’s a good nickname, but I prefer Cheteshwar,” Pujara had also told ESPN around the same time.

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