Yorkshire CCC chairman Lord Kamlesh Patel hints at Headingley exit

In an interview with The Cricketer, Patel said that there will “come a time in the not-too-distant future when I do stand down”.

Patel said that he owes it to former player Azeem Rafiq – “a powerful example to me” – to see the job through and that he has “a responsibility to finish the job I started”.

Rafiq yesterday tweeted that Patel is “an outstanding man & the reason YCCC is still around”.

Patel’s comments came after national newspapers reported that he was the ECB “suit” whom Ben Stokes told to “f*** off” after the 2019 World Cup final triumph in response to a perceived lack of support from the governing body after the infamous Bristol fight in 2017.

Stokes was said to have sworn at Patel – then a member of the ECB board – in response to the claim that Patel had asked him for a selfie.

Stokes admitted to his outburst in an Amazon documentary Phoenix from the Ashes, which is released on Friday, although the Test captain yesterday refused to confirm or deny whether Patel was the recipient of his ire.

Patel, who rarely, if ever, gives newspaper interviews suggested that the stories were racially motivated.

He told George Dobell of The Cricketer website, the journalist who has championed Rafiq’s story from the start: “I do find it revealing and unsettling that the one person of colour on the ECB board at the time – I was actually the first Asian person to serve on the ECB board – has been blamed for supposedly wanting to punish Ben (after the Bristol fight).” Patel added that he was “very disappointed that the ECB haven’t put out a statement to refute this”.

Last week, The Yorkshire Post revealed that the independent investigation into Rafiq’s allegations of racism at Yorkshire found that he did not lose his career to racism after all, a fact which neither Patel nor the DCMS sought fit to mention.

The report included allegations that Rafiq, to whom Patel paid £200,000 in an employment tribunal settlement, made a number of racially-insensitive comments himself such as telling team-mate Gary Ballance to “f*** off back to Zimbabwe”.