Given that he is one of five who withdrew from the trial due to lack of confidence in the England and Wales Cricket Board’s investigation, a guilty verdict against him seems very possible. But whatever the outcome in the coming days, Blain believes he could have cleared his name if “due process had been followed”.
“I come from a police background and if an allegation is made, you investigate,” he says. “My father has that spirit very much because of his background and his upbringing. But none of that has arrived and we can’t understand why. It was so frustrating for me because I have the context and I have evidence to say that this could be done” don’t happen and don’t happen.”
To prove his point, Blain is brandishing a diary he kept from the 2010 and 2011 seasons in which he coached Rafiq in the Yorkshire second team. There are intricate details of exchanges with all players. There are several pages expressing concern about Rafiq’s alleged “bad discipline” at the time.
There is also an account of Blain meeting with Martyn Moxon, the director of cricket at the time, to discuss Rafiq’s behaviour. “The Christian in me wanted to contact Azeem,” Blain said when the allegations were first presented to him. “I offered that to my lawyer — to just talk to him and have some kind of dialogue, because at the end of the day, regardless of what he’s said, I care about him and his family.”
The England and Wales Cricket Board defended its investigation at the Cricket Discipline Commission hearing, saying it wrote individuals to give them a chance to respond in writing before any charges were brought. Any respondent who requested to be spoken to was spoken to, the governing body added, but Blain is dismayed he was never invited to present his own evidence in person.
“I was never offered a face-to-face interview,” he said. “I just got my indictment. Between the stages of the process of getting the charges and then getting charged was a hellish period. Now as we enter a third week into the London hearings, it’s the same sort of thing.”
‘I’m going to the Supreme Court’
Similar complaints about the ECB’s “unilateral” process were raised two weeks ago by Michael Vaughan’s legal team during fraught exchanges at the Fleet Street hearing. Blain shares the Ashes-winning former England captain’s complaints about the inquiry, but says he has no regrets about not turning up.
Instead, he reveals that he is willing to challenge a possible guilty verdict against him, possibly in the Supreme Court. The former pace bowler who represented Scotland 118 times and claimed 188 wickets was also named by Cricket Scotland in the wake of a separate independent assessment of racism in the Scottish game last year, with Haq coming forward after Rafiq’s claim to the light came.
Blain strongly denies the claims and he has several witnesses who say neither claim happened. “I think the whole process is unfair,” he adds. “To begin with, each case has to be looked at individually. But how they have treated me feels extremely unfair and if decisions were against me then I have to move on and eventually I will go to the Supreme Court.”