Yorkshire players seek talks with rival clubs

YORKSHIRE’S players are not expected to start cricket-specific training until midJanuary following the mass sacking of the club’s coaching staff.

And The Mail On Sunday understands the entire first-team squad are contemplating putting their names to correspondence asking for the right to speak to other clubs regardless of current contract status.

A healthy proportion of players are understood to be happy to stay, but sticking as a group would avoid leaving individuals who want to explore other opportunities from feeling isolated.

Some are understood to be extremely upset by the treatment of coaches and medics they were close to while others are fearful of their reputations being tarred by association after Yorkshire’s former chairman, Roger Hutton, told a Select Committee last month that institutional racism existed at Headingley.

Recent events, which saw Darren Gough appointed as managing director of cricket, have left Yorkshire with a skeleton staff and those players who remain in the country on limited fitness programmes.

While Joe Root, Dawid Malan, Jonny Bairstow and Dom Bess are involved in the Ashes and Harry Brook, Jordan Thompson and Tom Kohler-Cadmore are overseas playing in Twenty20 leagues, their UK-based team-mates have been restricted to yoga and fitness sessions with outside specialists and told not to expect net practice to begin until the third week of January.

Gough has held multiple video meetings with Yorkshire’s players during his first 10 days in the job. An open call for candidates to apply for the vacant head coach’s job went out on Friday but that process will take weeks and rival first-class counties picked up bats and balls again in November.

It is not only the lack of coaches that is delaying net sessions being arranged as part of the ongoing off-season programme. They cannot take place at professional level without physios and doctors being present.

Meanwhile, some of the 16 who lost their jobs or had their contracts cancelled are pursuing legal action against the club. Former first-team coach Andrew Gale is making an employment tribunal claim.