MICHAEL VAUGHAN has revealed he “burst out crying” after being cleared of racism as he opened up on 512 days of hell for him and his wife Nichola.
The 48-year-old had been charged with making a racist comment towards a group of Yorkshire team-mates by the England and Wales Cricket Board.
The comment was alleged to have been made towards Azeem Rafiq, Adil Rashid, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan and Ajmal Shahzad before a match in 2009.
But England cricket icon Vaughan revealed yesterday he had been cleared of the charges.
However, his former Yorkshire team-mates Tim Bresnan, John Blain, Andrew Gale, Matthew Hoggard and Richard Pyrah were all found, on the balance of probabilities, to have used racist and/or discriminatory language.
Vaughan, a 2005 Ashes winner, has now spoken about the toll of the whole ordeal on both him and his family as he feared his cricket career was over.
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Vaughan, who was in his van at 7am on Friday on his way to get his son when he found out the news, told The Telegraph: “I just burst out crying.
“It was just the pure relief when your lawyer says you’re cleared. The hardest thing for me has been to see the suffering of my family and the families of Azeem Rafiq, Adil Rashid and all the lads involved.
“The trauma these individuals have had to go through has not been fair on human beings.
“When your wife is having to take beta blockers for 16 months and you wake up in the middle of the night and she is crying her eyes out it is so hard.
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“Anyone with kids knows they don’t give much away, but I know how hard it has been for them and the children of all those involved.
“My wife knows how hard I have worked in the game for 32 years. She could see it was crashing down. There are people who wanted to see the back of me in cricket.
“It was only around 11am today when I had the radio on I realised how big news it was. Then it hit me. I thought: 'Oh no, what if it had gone the other way?' I would have been done.”
Vaughan also blasted the ECB over its handling of the case.
He added: “At the hearing I thought 'we are here on a word-on-word comment from 14 years ago' and the ECB – an organisation I gave everything to for 17 years from England Under-17s to England Test team – try to discredit you in a hearing.
“How has it got to this? What is it all about? It was a serious matter but it all went too far. It could have been dealt with in a better way.”
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