Jonathan Agnew is the subject of a formal complaint to the BBC over a series of abusive tweets he sent to a fellow cricket writer.
The Test Match Special commentator has deleted his Twitter account after making a series of late-night posts calling the Independent’s Jonathan Liew a racist, despite already having being warned by BBC bosses about his behaviour towards the same journalist.
In a series of tweets posted at around 1am on Tuesday morning, Agnew called Liew a “sad racist troll after clickbait”. In a response to another user claiming Liew was using the “race card”, Agnew replied: “Horrible Man. Seriously.”
Liew said he had decided to act on Tuesday but had no idea whether the complaint to the BBC had been dealt with: “I would very much like him to stop calling me a racist because that’s defamatory – and it’s not true. I am not a racist. I would very much like him to leave me alone.”
The BBC said it would not be commenting on the incident. Liew has not been provided with an update on any disciplinary process.
Agnew is one of the BBC’s highest earners, on more than £170,000 a year.
The pair first clashed in public earlier this year after Liew wrote a column suggesting that journalists, including Agnew, had been more critical of the decision to call up Barbados-born Jofra Archer to the England cricket team than they had been of previous decisions to call up white players born in South Africa and Australia.
“There’s an incendiary word you could posit to describe all this, but I’m not going to use it,” wrote Liew.
In response Agnew repeatedly sent messages calling Liew a “cunt”.