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Michael Vaughan axed from Ashes coverage amid racism scandal

Former England cricket captain, Michael Vaughan, during commentary.
Former England cricket captain, Michael Vaughan, has denied allegations he made a racist remark during his cricket days. (Getty Images)

Former England captain Michael Vaughan has been axed from BBC Ashes commentary after he was embroiled in the English racism cricket scandal.

Vaughan has repeatedly denied allegations he made a racist remark to Yorkshire player Azeem Rafiq when taking the field against Nottinghamshire in 2009.

The report alleged Vaughan told Rafiq and two other Asian players that there are "too many of you lot, we need to do something about it".

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The former England captain was stood down from his BBC radio show earlier this month after being implicated in allegations of racism.

Now, a BBC spokesperson said: "While he is involved in a significant story in cricket, for editorial reasons we do not believe that it would be appropriate for Michael Vaughan to have a role in our Ashes team or wider coverage of the sport at the moment.

"We require our contributors to talk about relevant topics and his involvement in the Yorkshire story represents a conflict of interest."

Vaughan is yet to find out if he will be travelling to Australia for the up coming Ashes series for BT Sport, as he is also contracted by Fox Network.

On Thursday, Vaughan took to Instagram to express his disappointment.

However, he doubled down that he was excited to be working as part of the Fox Cricket team.

English cricket scandal deepens

In a statement issued earlier in November, Vaughan said: "I categorically deny saying the words attributed to me by Azeem Rafiq and want to re-state this publicly because the 'you lot' comment simply never happened.

"It is extremely upsetting that this completely false accusation has been made against me by a former teammate, apparently supported by two other players.

"I have been in contact with the six other players from that team and not one of them has any recollection of the remark being made."

Rafiq's allegations were followed by current England leg-spinner Adil Rashid becoming the second player to claim that Michael Vaughan, the former England captain, told a group of four Asian Yorkshire players: "(there's) too many of your lot, we need to do something about it".

with AAP

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