Two of the other players there at the time, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan and Adil Rashid, backed up Rafiq’s allegation.

Vaughan has continually denied making the comment but said he was sorry and “deeply hurt” for what Rafiq went through during his time at the club.

He also apologised for a number of racist tweets and comments made on air. In 2017, Vaughan tweeted that English cricketer Moeen Ali should ask fellow Muslims if they were terrorists. In 2018, he said of Indian batter Cheteshwar Pujara while commenting: “Steve as they call him in Yorkshire because they can’t pronounce his first name.”

These incidents took place well before Rafiq publicly spoke up about his time at Yorkshire, but it wasn’t until he forced a reckoning in English cricket that Vaughan was held to account. The BBC announced that Vaughan would no longer play a role in its Ashes coverage, showing how seriously they took the allegations.

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Another broadcaster, BT, had already agreed to syndicate Fox’s commentary but in light of the allegations against Vaughan they extraordinarily decided to splice in an additional commentator whenever Vaughan was on air. Eventually BT decided it was simpler to cobble together its own commentary team, split between the UK and Australia, but clearly a lot of thought and expense was invested in trying to avoid broadcasting Vaughan to audiences.

The end result is that Vaughan can’t be heard in the UK, but is one of the most prominent voices commentating the series here in Australia. That in and of itself shows how far behind the conversation is in Australia, compared to the UK, but the almost total lack of serious debate and discussion about the decision within the cricketing community and media is further proof.

Fox Sports’ executive director declined to comment when asked by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald about the decision to continue working with Vaughan. Shane Warne, another Fox commentator, sympathised with Vaughan and said: “I think he’s a fantastic commentator, a good addition to our team at Fox Cricket, and we’re looking forward to him coming out.”

The only conclusion to draw from this situation is that serious allegations of racism are no barrier to success and financial reward in Australian sports media. Of course this isn’t totally surprising given how often Australian media outlets have been the last refuge for controversial far-right figures blacklisted from their home countries (think Katie Hopkins). But seeing the stark, real-time difference between the reaction in the UK and in Australia really highlights how much more work needs to be done here.

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Of course, that work is being done, but not by the high-profile, wealthy white athletes and media figures like Warne, who have the least to lose by speaking up, but by those who have first-hand experience of what it means to be a part of a sport like cricket when you’re from an under-represented background.

One of the few Australian cricket figures to publicly back Rafiq was Jason Gillespie, the first, and before Boland only, Indigenous Test player for Australia. Gillespie is a former coach at Yorkshire and he described Rafiq’s testimony as “heartbreaking”.

A few weeks ago, Usman Khawaja, the first Muslim to play Test cricket for Australia, described his own experiences with racism in Australian cricket in an interview with the ABC. Much of what he said chimed with the stories told by Azeem Rafiq, Nasser Hussein and other non-white crickets in the UK.

“I was very different and that is held against you to some respect, and I saw it from time to time,” Khawaja said “I think part of it had to do with culture, part of it definitely had to do with some sort of systemic racism, and even part of it had to do some sort of bias.”

It’s not the first time Khawaja has spoken up about what he describes as systemic racism within Australian cricket. But unlike what has played out in the UK, there have been no inquiries, investigations, reports, parliamentary hearings, or Prime Ministerial statements.

As much as we should be celebrating Boland’s achievements right now, we shouldn’t pretend that his success on its own will magically fix the structures within cricket that have kept others like him, and Khawaja, locked out for so long.

Australia needs its own reckoning but as long as we’re willing to be Michael Vaughan’s safety net, that day is never going to come.