Yorkshire has confirmed that under the previous administration, documents concerning allegations of racism against the county cricket club were deleted. After admitting to four amended charges brought by the England and Wales Cricket Board regarding the club’s handling of former player Azeem Rafiq’s allegations, Yorkshire representatives will not be present at a Cricket Discipline Commission hearing next week in London.

Although the county would not specify who was responsible for the deletion or destruction of both electronic and paper documents prior to the appointment of the current chairman, Kamlesh Patel, it has now been confirmed that one of the charges relates to this.

“After 5 November 2021, it was discovered that emails and documents, both held electronically by the club and in paper copy, had been irretrievably deleted from both servers and laptops and otherwise destroyed,”

a club statement said.

“After a thorough independent investigation it was established that the deletion and destruction of documents date from a time period prior to the appointment of Lord Patel and relate to the allegations of racism and the club’s response to those allegations. The club is not prepared to conjecture publicly as to why this occurred, who was responsible or the motivation for doing so.”

The statement further said.

The disciplinary hearing for next week will begin on Wednesday, but the only person who has been charged is still scheduled to appear: former England captain Michael Vaughan.

John Blain, Matthew Hoggard, Tim Bresnan, Richard Pyrah, and Andrew Gale have all declined to participate in the procedure. In their absence, the charges against those five will still be heard by the Cricket Discipline Commission panel.

Those like Walters have totally lost the plot – without Patel and the steps he took the club could well have been wound up. The culture at the club was toxic and had to be reset – true cricket and Yorkshire fans owe him a debt of gratitude

— Paul Woodhead (@PaulWoodhead100) February 20, 2023

Gary Ballance, who is also charged, will not appear because he has already acknowledged using language that is racially discriminatory. Rafiq, 31, a Pakistani-born student at Yorkshire, made his first allegations of racism and bullying in September 2020.

In December 2022, he stated to a British parliamentary committee that the abuse he and his family had endured had compelled him to leave the UK.