Yorkshire members show their support for returning Graves
YORKSHIRE’S members may not always agree with Colin Graves. They may not – every single one of them – always like Colin Graves, a controversial figure who says what he thinks. But the sense that they trust that Graves will do right by them and the club in general was difficult to escape at Headingley on Friday.
At a members’ forum in the Long Room prior to the first day of the ongoing County Championship match against Leicestershire, a couple of hundred or so interested souls heard the returning chair outline the state of play at Yorkshire and his thoughts on the future; it’s fair to say that dissenting voices were few and far between, if, indeed, they existed at all.
The reaction seemed significant precisely because Graves is what might tritely be termed a “Marmite” character, someone who attracts admiration and opprobrium aplenty.
After all, this is someone who clearly thinks that the Hundred (a concept which he introduced as chair of the England and Wales Cricket Board) is the best thing since sliced bread and who would presumably spread his own Marmite on it given half the chance.
But although most Yorkshire members care little for that concept, designed mainly to appeal to a different audience, and although some are wary of Graves’ talk of private investment in the game and of Yorkshire, along with other counties, ceasing to become member-owned, the respect for Graves in the room was clear.
Whatever happens, and however much cricket changes, those members trust that he will not let Yorkshire go to pot; there was perhaps not the same sense of certainty when Lord Kamlesh Patel of Bradford, for example, was steering the Titanic.
On a day when one Yorkshire member quipped, as only a Yorkshire member could, “can’t you just sell the Hundred to the ruddy Americans?”, to which Graves replied with a nonchalant flick for six off his legs, “I can sell the Hundred to anyone, sir”, the 76-year-old performed with the relaxed and confident air of someone back on familiar, if vastlychanged territory.
It was a performance in some contrast to that in front of the Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) select committee in February, a body which continues to subject Graves – and the club per se – to what might be termed a vendetta of grandstanding scrutiny, warning on the very same day as the members’ forum, in fact, that the ECB must “closely monitor” Yorkshire to make sure that there is no return to “business as usual” under Graves after the racism crisis, an extraordinarily unhelpful and inflammatory intervention.
At Yorkshire, “business as usual” must now start to mean getting back to how that club was being run, as a strong and stable financial concern, prior to when that crisis began, and before it experienced – mark this figure – a negative swing of some £10m. That is the extent of the damage inflicted by a litany of terrible decisions which led, ironically for Graves’ detractors, to his returning to the club as the only viable refinancing option in town.
There was an amusing moment when one member asked if most of the club’s problems – on a day when it announced a circa £3m loss for the financial year – had, in fact, been self-inflicted, the proverbial loaded question.
Graves chuckled, said that he had to be careful what he said and confined his thoughts to the following: “I think a lot of things could have been avoided, to be honest. I think things were handled not well. They could have been handled better, even from square one.
“This is going back three years, to be honest. The regime at the time did what they thought was right.
They did what they did from a club perspective point of view. If anything, it didn’t help, it made it worse, and as that rolled on for the next year-to-18 months, the cost of all that then started to bite.
“All the things that happened, the compensation we’ve had to pay out, the legal fees we’ve had to pay out, are horrific. If you look in real terms, at the end of last year, I think this business had four firms of solicitors advising it. The cost of that was horrific. And these were London advisors, not Leeds advisors.
“Could a lot of things have been done better? Yes. If you were starting again, you wouldn’t do any of that, to be honest. But we are where we are. Let’s put the past behind us. We can’t change any of it. It’s history. It’s finished. What we’ve got to do now as a club is look forward.”
The future, said Graves, would see increasing American investment in the game, backed by companies such as Google and Yahoo, potentially impacting on the English season. It would see increasing Indian interest in UK cricket; Delhi Capitals, the IPL franchise, is on the brink of securing a majority stake in Hampshire. Once that happens, and with the Saudi influence expanding too, it can hardly be ruled out that Yorkshire will fall into outside ownership.
But where Graves seemed to win over any sceptical members was with this guarantee – that their rights would always be protected within that bigger picture of safeguarding Headingley and the club overall.
As he put it: “This is not Yorkshire changing, this is the whole world of cricket changing. This is English cricket changing. People have to look at it, absorb it, understand it and the rationale behind it. But members’ rights will always be protected.”