Speaking at Hay, Fry said that it was awkward to be president of the MCC as a white man during the period when allegations of racism were first emerging.

He said: “I felt slightly embarrassed to be president of the MCC at exactly this time, because I thought I’m the perfect example of the problem has been for hundreds of years, largely, fleshy, white Englishmen, public school, Oxbridge, that are running things.”

Speaking at the event in Hay, Rafiq countered by saying that simply increasing diversity at a high level was not enough, and cited Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, as an example of diversity alone not solving problems.

He said that “middle-aged white men” had been his greatest supporters when he first levelled his allegations of racism.

The off-spin bowler added that more needed to be done to encourage racial inclusion in cricket, including pushing the social side of the sport away from focus on alcohol.

He said: “Club cricket, a lot of cricket, revolves around alcohol. The minute you turn up to a club, to the minute you leave, is around alcohol.

“It excludes Muslims and everyone that doesn’t drink.

“The game needs to evolve its economy so it doesn’t just, at the recreational level, just revolve around alcohol.”

Rafiq, 33, thanked Gary Ballance, his former Yorkshire teammate who admitted to being racist in the team’s dressing room and apologised in person for any offence.

Rafiq claimed that without Ballance’s “honesty”, the inquiry into alleged racism at Yorkshire would have been a “whitewash”, because no clear examples may have been found to support his claims.