Essex fined over racial slur in board meeting and subsequent failure to investigate

The club has also been cautioned as to its further conduct and was issued with a reprimand; £15,000 of the fine has been suspended for two years

Essex have been issued a £50,000 fine by the Cricket Discipline Commission after pleading guilty to two charges in relation to a racist comment made by John Faragher, the club's former chair.

The county was charged with breaching ECB directive 3.3 which states: "No participant may conduct themself in a manner or do any act or omission at any time which may be prejudicial to the interests of cricket or which may bring the ECB, the game of cricket or any cricketer or group of cricketers into disrepute."

The club has also been cautioned as to its further conduct and was issued with a reprimand; £15,000 of the fine has been suspended for two years.

Faragher was obliged to step down in November after it became apparent that he had used the racist terminology "n***** in the woodpile" in a board meeting in February 2017. He has vehemently denied the allegation but Essex "admitted to its use in answer to this charge".

However, the charge also related to the failure of the club's executive board to conduct an investigation once the allegation was known to all of the board's members in January 2018.

^{John Faragher stepped down last November (Dan Istitene/Getty Images)}

The resignation of Faragher followed shortly after the appointment last October of John Stephenson as Essex's chief executive, who became aware of the allegation. He subsequently took over as interim chair, at which point the club agreed for an independent investigation to take place, with the county waiting for the final report.

Stephenson gave evidence, which was released among the written reasons provided by the CDC, which was chaired by Ricky Needham, alongside Amrisha Parathalingam and Mark Milliken-Smith QC, in which he stated that the county's "current constitution is written in a way where the board is both judge and jury as regards its own behaviour, which cannot be right".

He added that the position of some on the board "is not compatible with moving forward with a culture change". In the disciplinary panel's decision, that was described as "a lamentable logjam at board level".

The panel's findings described Faragher's comment as "all the more deplorable" for having come from a club chair, while adding that the initial failure to investigate "significantly aggravates the use of the terminology itself".

In mitigation, the CDC noted the "significant steps" taken since Stephenson's arrival, as well as a "significant motivation to tackle racism and to promote greater inclusion and diversity within the club and its wider community".