Azeem Rafiq, who is at the center of the racism controversy in Yorkshire cricket, has been accused of sending ‘creepy’ text messages to a woman when she was 16 years old, the Yorkshire Post reported. The woman in question, one Gayathri Ajith, has said that the cricketer of Pakistani origin sent inappropriate texts to her.
Gayathri Ajith was 16 years old when she met Azeem Rafiq but told him she was 17 in order to appear a “bit older”. She said that she agreed to have coke vodka with him on the plane but refused an invite to have dinner with him in Dubai.
Azeem Rafiq sent her texts that read “u know what I wanted to do on the plane?” and “I want to grab you push u up against wall and kiss you”. Ajith responded saying, “do you realise that I’m only 17?” To that, the cricketer responded, “Does tht mean it not allowed to want to kiss me”. Another text said, “Wud u have let me kiss u?”.
Ajith, creeped out, asked him, “How do I know that you’re no some absolute pervert”. She told the Yorkshire Post, “I was just kind of shocked by the crudity of those messages. They were just so vulgar.” She also said that some of the allegations of racism he labeled do not sit right with her.
She said, “If he was being forced to drink by his teammates, then surely that wouldn’t then mean he would be drinking alone on a flight and encouraging a 17-year-old girl to be drinking with him.” “His behaviour towards me was a direct contradiction really of what he said in his testimony,” she added.
Rafiq was accused of “contributing to the problem of the vulgar attitudes towards women”. The allegations by Ajith comes right after the cricketer had to apologise for making anti-Semitic comments on social media in the past.
The cricketer of Pakistani origin had earlier accused Yorkshire Cricket Club of racism. “I know how close I was to committing suicide during my time at Yorkshire. I was living my family’s dream as a professional cricketer, but inside I was dying. I was dreading going to work. I was in pain every day,” he had said in an interview last year.
Rafiq claimed that he regretted doing un-Islamic things in order to fit in. “But as soon as I stopped trying to fit in, I was an outsider. There were no coaches on the staff from a similar background who understood what it was like,” he narrated.
