Graves ends his Yorkshire chair bid in bitter row
Major backer withdraws offer to refinance club’s £15m debt Crisis-hit county lash out over ‘last-resort’ allegation
Colin Graves’s 21-year era as Yorkshire’s major financial backer has ended in an acrimonious fallout with the club’s current regime.
The Costcutter founder, who has pulled out of the running to return as chairman, sparked an angry club response over a letter accusing the board of acting “negligently”.
Email correspondence in February led the businessman to believe he had an agreement with interim chair Baroness Grey-thompson to replace Lord Patel.
But he now believes the club were preparing to offer him the role only as a “last resort”.
“As directors, it appears that you may have acted negligently to the impending financial crisis that the club is facing,” he wrote in a letter to Grey-thompson, which has been seen by Telegraph Sport.
Yorkshire still owe about £15million to the Colin Graves Trust and have been looking for external investment since January. Graves was understood to have reached an agreement with the trust, which is run by independent trustees, to extend repayment by another three years in return for him coming back as chairman and putting the club on a secure financial footing.
However, as he effectively withdrew his offer, the club immediately accused him of making unfounded claims. Yorkshire said in a statement they were “disappointed” that Graves had gone public with his decision to withdraw his chairmanship application “and are obliged to make it absolutely clear that at no point did Colin make a clearly defined, tangible offer that the board was able to consider formally, unlike other interested parties”.
The row is just the latest in a series of bitter fallouts between current and former board members since the club were brought to their knees by the Azeem Rafiq racism furore.
In recent months, Graves had offered to underwrite the club with a personal guarantee in “extreme” circumstances. However, former Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley entered the running alongside the owners of the Delhi Capitals Indian Premier League franchise and the Saudi national investment fund. A deal could be announced in the coming days.
Graves bailed out Yorkshire in 2002 and was executive chairman from 2012 to 2015. He was chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board from 2015 to 2020. He planned to restructure Yorkshire as a business but believed it would not be necessary because he had the backing of investors willing to come on board with him. He offered to be chair for three years in an unpaid role but has now pulled out, believing he has been used as a backstop option by the board if it does not secure 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 said.
“You as a club approached me on Jan 9, 2023 (via a director) asking me if I was interested in returning as chairman. Since then I have outlined my positive approach to doing that role unpaid, and to save our great club from its impending financial crisis while respecting the confidentiality of our discussions you requested of me.
“I have gone through every process and interview that you and Perrett Laver [recruitment consultants] have established, providing everything that you required. For
‘It would appear that your board is determined to obtain investment into the club from any outside source’
the last two months I have been told you would do a great job with your experience and knowledge of cricket and the club over the past 20 years, and that you personally looked forward to working with me.
“It would appear that your board is determined to obtain investment into the club from any outside source – other than using my offer to stabilise the club, and then to trade out of the difficult situation the previous chairman and your fellow directors have placed this members’ club in. As you know, this was achieved before in 2002, when the club had no assets to utilise as collateral in its refinancing.”
However, as the extracts of the letter became public, Yorkshire attempted to pick apart Graves’s claims. The club said he had “indicated that the terms of his return would require total control of the board and executive” but that would run counter to their aim of “using a fair, thorough and robust process” to make the new chair appointment.
The club added: “Colin also makes a number of allegations about the board’s actions in regard to finances which are unfounded and indicate a distinct lack of understanding of the current position of YCCC.”