Colin Graves withdraws from working to change into Yorkshire chair
Colin Graves has withdrawn his provide to refinance Yorkshire’s £14.9 million debt, and won’t be returning to his former function of chair on the membership after criticising the size of time it has taken to nominate a successor to Lord Patel, who stepped down in March.
Graves’ household belief is owed roughly £15 million by Yorkshire following his bail-out in 2002, though the membership has been various sources of funding, with potential names within the body together with Mike Ashley, the previous proprietor of Newcastle United, and the Saudi nationwide funding fund.
Yorkshire are as a result of repay £500,000 to the Graves Trust in October, with the rest of the steadiness due in October 2024, though Graves himself was understood to have reached an settlement with its impartial trustees to increase the reimbursement phrases by an additional three years, in alternate for his return as Yorkshire chair.
However, in a letter to the interim chair, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, and seen by the Telegraph, Graves has now withdrawn from that settlement in precept, with a broadside on the membership for successfully utilizing him as a backstop in the event that they did not safe the funding elsewhere.
“After five months of constant discussions, interviews, exchange of emails, it would appear that your board only require my services as chairman as a last resort. Other excellent candidates have been rejected, in a process that has proven to be arduous and disappointing to all who participated,” he wrote.
Yorkshire’s monetary place stays parlous within the wake of Azeem Rafiq’s revelations about institutional racism at Headingley, and the following withdrawal of a bunch of key sponsors on the top of the disaster. In a press release, the membership responded that they have been “disappointed” with Graves’ pronouncements, including that his proposal had by no means been a definitive provide for formal board-level dialogue.
“We remain at a critical point in the future of Yorkshire County Cricket Club,” the assertion learn. “The board is squarely focused on securing the financial security of the club and we are continuing the positive conversations around investment from various sources.
“We have been notified that Colin Graves has determined to withdraw his software for chair. We are disenchanted that he has determined to take action publicly and are obliged to make it completely clear that at no level did Colin make a clearly outlined, tangible provide that the board was capable of think about formally, not like different events concerned within the refinance course of.
“We have consistently outlined that the new chair would be appointed using a fair, thorough and robust process, which is ongoing. Colin indicated that the terms of his return as chair would require total control of the board and executive. This would run counter to that process, as well as the best practice governance requirements set out in the County Governance Code that were agreed by all counties in 2019.
“Colin additionally makes plenty of allegations in regards to the board’s actions in regard to funds that are unfounded and point out a definite lack of knowledge of the present place of YCCC. The short- and long-term monetary wellbeing of the membership stays the board’s precedence, and we is not going to be distracted by hypothesis which is unhelpful to our main goal of securing the way forward for Yorkshire County Cricket Club and making it a welcoming membership for everybody.”