Essex wanted to keep anonymity throughout independent review into racist abuse

A report by Katharine Newton KC published last December found reference to players’ ethnic, racial and religious origins was “entirely normalised and tolerated behaviour” within the dressing-room culture between the mid-1990s until around 2013, under the misguided belief that it was acceptable ‘banter’.

Newton was commissioned to carry out the report in 2021 after allegations of discrimination were made by former Essex players Jahid Ahmed, Maurice Chambers and Zoheb Sharif.

The club revealed on Wednesday that sanctions have now been issued, but have not confirmed who has been sanctioned, how many individuals are involved and what the nature of those sanctions are.

Mohindru told the PA news agency: “I am not going to give a number because it’s about jigsaw identification.

“Everyone who has been implicated and had an adverse finding in the report has been sanctioned in some way.

“When the report came out we gave it to the independent panel, who then had nothing off the table for them at that stage. They could decide what was appropriate from bans, to losing membership to bans from the ground.

“That was then sent back to the board and everybody had an opportunity to make representation with regards to mitigating circumstances or anything we thought the board should take into consideration.

“The board then took the starting point that the panel had thought or the range, took mitigation into place and then we imposed the sanction.

If we had revealed it, I am sure we would have been criticised for that and by not revealing it, we’ll be criticised for that, but what I can say is it has been a very strong process

Essex chair Anu Mohindru

“Each person has been told individually.