Daily Times

LONDON: English county cricket club Essex has been fined £50,000 ($61,500) and reprimanded following a racist remark made by their former chairman, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) announced Friday. The county admitted John Faragher used the highly offensive term during a board meeting in 2017 and accepted they had failed to hold a timely investigation into the matter. Faragher, who resigned last November, has denied using the phrase. An independent cricket discipline panel concluded that a points deduction would be inappropriate and instead settled on a financial penalty, of which £15,000 has been suspended. The incidents at Essex, based in Chelmsford, came to light following the Azeem Rafiq racism scandal. The former spinner told a parliamentary committee in November about the abuse he suffered while playing for Yorkshire, saying he had been driven to thoughts of suicide. His revelations led to a mass clear out of senior boardroom figures and coaching staff at Yorkshire, as well as leading to the unearthing of racist incidents at several other first-class counties.