Racism in sport is rife, screamed an ITV sports bulletin highlighting the latest claims made by Azeem Rafiq, the one-time Yorkshire skipper about cricket.

Yes cricket, lovely cricket. The gentleman’s game of all things. Yorkshire County Cricket Club is promising a thorough and impartial inquiry - along with a wider review of its policies and culture - after Rafiq claimed that the club is institutionally racist and that those responsible for his torment are still at Headingley.

Rafiq, who left Yorkshire two years ago and at 29 is now chasing a career outside the sport, said that his allegations were ignored and that he as spoken out to help others who might also be suffering.

Roger Hutton, the new Yorkshire chairman, described the allegations as "hugely concerning" and accepted Yorkshire "must do better to fully promote a culture of zero tolerance to racism or any form of prejudice."

Ah yes, yet another investigation to add to the several now ongoing in sport. At the moment British sport seems to be undertaking more investigations into misdemeanours than Hercule Poirot.

"A culture of fear tarnishing Olympic dreams", declared the Daily Mail yesterday above an impressive investigation of its own by the excellent sports journo Riath Al-Samarrai, who suggested many British sports are in turmoil amid escalating scandals with athletes scared to speak up and even walking away from sport because of alleged bullying and racism. He is absolutely bang on the button.

While attempting to clear away the COVID-19 cobwebs, sport is now enmeshed in so-called independent investigations into the conduct of administrators as well as some of its participants. Notably in football we saw the sending home of two England players, Phil Foden and Mason Greenwood, for breaking coronavirus regulations in Iceland by inviting young ladies into the hotel bubble.

The basis of the growing complaints about the dictatorial methods of some of those running particular sports has been the philosophy of the Government funding agency, UK Sport, with what appears to have been a win-at-any-cost, no-compromise philosophy towards international competition. This is firmly refuted but there is much evidence from the angry footsoldiers to dispute the denial. There have been several "investigations" authorised by UK sport and individual sports bodies themselves into alleged wrongdoings. And more are in the pipeline.

Major enquiries were centred around sexual abuse by certain coaches in youth football, which has resulted in long prison sentences. In cycling, one of Britain’s most successful Olympic sports, it was found there had been cultures or climates of fear as well as in swimming and canoeing.

Almost unbelievably, investigations have produced similar evidence in Para-swimming, rowing, bobsleigh and archery.

The most recent and ongoing investigation - apart from that ordered by the English Football Association into those two errant footballers and Manchester United captain Harry Maguire’s conviction for assaulting police while holidaying in Greece - reveals an apparent can of worms that has been opened in British Gymnastics, where chief coach Amanda Reddin has temporarily stepped down.

Like UK Sport and other ruling bodies British Gymnastics has been accused of not listening to the concerns of athletes, some of whom have been afraid to speak out publicly because they fear reprisals such as funding cuts.

Thankfully attitudes have softened somewhat at UK sport under the new stewardship of former Olympic rowing star Dame Katherine Grainger, but it does seem the organisation had been getting above itself and took its eye off the ball in allowing situations like that in gymnastics, where there is a burgeoning number of competitors voicing serious complaints about bullying, to develop.

And the previous regimes at UK Sport had been labelled perhaps somewhat unfairly as being "arrogant and controlling", whose obsessive focus on medals meant they could not countenance critics even when in a consultative report their approach was declared by one source as being detrimental to grassroots sport.

However, in the last 40 years I can’t recall a single incident of racism in either boxing or athletics, the two most racially, socially and culturally integrated major sports, either in and out of the ring or on and off the track. But neither sport can claim to be squeaky clean, with continuing investigations into doping and more.  

There are murmurings that perhaps more responsibility for athletes' welfare should be given to the British Olympic Association, which is no longer simply a blazer brigade over-concerned with getting the marching in step in Opening Ceremonies. Successive chairs, Sir Craig Reedie, Sebastian Coe and now former Sport and Olympics Minister Sir Hugh Robertson have helped whip it into shape as a thoroughly professional and competent organisation capable of overseeing British sports - most of whom are in the Olympic programme anyway - as happens in several other countries.

The Daily Mail investigation into the current sorry state of affairs suggests that what British sport needs is an ombudsman, something I have advocated on insidethegames. Or an ombudswoman. A perfect role, surely for either of those doughty and sports-loving baronesses Tanni Grey-Thompson or Kate Hoey.

Of course there is always a Sports Minister. Or is there? The UK has had a steady stream of Sports Ministers, 18 in all since the peerless prototype Denis Howell back in 1964. These incorporated the good, the bad and, as one sports leader put it to me, the plain bloody useless.

At the moment one wonders just who is speaking up for sport at Government level on the subject of these welfare problems. We have hardly heard a peep from Westminster.

Okay so I know the pandemic is controlling and consuming just about everything in our daily lives but I cannot imagine some of the better and more vociferous sports ministers such as Kate Hoey, Tony Banks, Colin Moynihan, Richard Caborn, Sir Hugh or Tracey Crouch remaining silent on the subject when in office.

Anyway, just who is the present Sports Minister? I confess I should’ve known - but I didn’t until I googled for him or her.

It turns out to be a new appointment, one Nigel Huddleston, 49, MP for Mid Worcestershire who has supplanted another unknown Nigel, Boris Johnson’s pal Nigel Adams, a cricket buff once on the Yorkshire Committee who has disappeared into the depths of the Foreign Office as Minister for Asia.

There seems to be no official information on Huddleston's sporting credentials, if any. But surely it is time that Nige got a grip and we heard from him, wherever he may be, about the dire situation that has invaded British sport. It is not going to go away, sir!