Tom Kohler-Cadmore's 'U-turn' since Alex Hepburn case deserves credit, but wider questions remain

Just over a year ago, Tom Kohler-Cadmore got a phone call from Andy Flower telling him that he had been stood down from England Lions duty.

His ex-Worcestershire team-mate Alex Hepburn was on trial at the time, accused of raping a sleeping woman in 2017. It had emerged that Kohler-Cadmore, along with Hepburn and Joe Clarke, had been a member of a WhatsApp group named 'stat chat', later described by a judge as "a pathetic sexist game to collect as many sexual encounters as possible".

"I knew the trial was going on but I had no court appearance scheduled or anything like that, so I was never in the position of thinking that I was in any danger," Kohler-Cadmore recalls. "On the phone, he [Flower, the ECB's technical director at the time] asked my involvement. I told him everything I knew about the WhatsApps and then he said me I was being suspended from the tour because of it.

"Everything I had ever worked for fell down right before me and then I was worrying whether I would be sacked. In a situation like that you have no idea what's happening.

"It just felt like everything was crashing down. That week afterwards I didn't want to look at my phone because every single message I was getting felt like bad news. I was thinking 'this is never going to end'."

Four months later, Hepburn would be sentenced to five years in jail after he was found guilty of one charge of oral rape and cleared of one rape charge. Kohler-Cadmore and Clarke were both fined £2000 and handed a backdated suspension by the ECB for their involvement in the group chat: while they had not committed a crime, it would be wide of the mark to suggest they had done nothing wrong.

In the details of the court case, Kohler-Cadmore comes off slightly better than Clarke. Unlike Clarke, he was not present on the night; unlike Clarke, there is no public record of messages that he sent. Again, neither of them was accused of any wrongdoing in the courts.

But although he did not post the 'rules' of the "sexual conquest game", Kohler-Cadmore did create the group chat. He suggests he "didn't see it [WhatsApp] as social media", and he says that "the learning from it was that it was about you as a whole".

"You can't allow yourself to be acting in that way," he reflects. "You have got conduct yourself a lot better [than I did]. Since then my life has had a proper U-turn in how I conduct myself."

Kohler-Cadmore deserves some credit for his attitude towards the sorry affair. He is clearly remorseful - he says he was "absolutely, 100 percent" treated fairly - and has worked with the Professional Cricketers' Association (PCA) and with Yorkshire to try and "make a positive out of what was a negative situation". He gave a talk to the county's academy earlier in the year, and will speak at the PCA's rookie camp ahead of this season. He speaks semi-regularly with Yorkshire's psychologist Mark Nesty, who encourages him to "make sure that I'm looking outwards instead of getting caught in my own little bubble".

It is easy, therefore, to feel some element of sympathy for Kohler-Cadmore. Few would be happy to have every message they had ever sent in the public domain, and the case has clearly had a major impact on his life for the last three years. His distinctive surname means that if you search for his name via Google, the first page of results will include his Wikipedia and ESPNcricinfo profiles, and a flood of articles relating to him being stood down from Lions duty or being told he would not be considered for international duty.

He seems genuinely sorry for his conduct, and relieved to be back in the Lions squad after fearing there would be an unofficial black mark against his name for the foreseeable future. He managed to separate his life on and off the field to end last season with an impressive set of statistics, averaging over 35 in all three formats.

But the fear with everything surrounding this case is that by focusing all our attention on three men, we miss a wider problem.

That is not, by any means, to suggest that Kohler-Cadmore, Clarke and Hepburn's actions do not deserve scrutiny; their group chat was not simply in bad taste, but degrading and misogynistic.

Instead, it is to consider how many similar chats undoubtedly exist among young players; to worry if counties are doing enough to promote positive cultures within their dressing rooms; and to realise that significantly more coverage has been given to how the incident has affected three cricketers and their careers than to its repercussions for Hepburn's victim.

Hepburn's victim cannot be named for legal reasons, but was then a student working part-time in a restaurant. Last year, she told the Mail on Sunday that she had suffered partial paralysis of the face, linked to a period of emotional trauma in which she experienced regular nightmares and panic attacks so severe that "my heart would beat out of my chest and sweat would pour from my palms". The effects Hepburn's actions had on Kohler-Cadmore and Clarke pale in comparison.

The PCA deserve immense credit in many areas, not least in their implementation of sexual consent workshops for all professionals across the country. But what a players' union cannot do is change damaging attitudes that have damaging consequences. That is hardly a problem exclusive to cricket - or to sport, for that matter - but it remains a salient one, not least with the amount of money on offer to young players continuing to grow.

So while the manner in which Kohler-Cadmore has responded to a difficult period for him is praiseworthy, it is worth remembering that he is not the wronged party here. He seems completely genuine in claiming that he has made great strides forward since 2017, and comes across as a mature young professional - it is clear why Yorkshire plan to build their side around him.

But it would be all too easy to turn this into a story about a cricketer. Instead, this case should make those in the game ask questions, the most important being: what steps can be taken to prevent anything like this happening again?