Yorkshire CCC will weigh up options over whether and how to replace Darren Gough

“We are also waiting to see whether we get one of the new women’s teams. We will then look at it and decide what we need from a cricket perspective.

“We can get through this summer; we’ve got good coaches. In the meantime, Phillip (Hodson, board member) is virtually doing a semi-director of cricket role in doing the things that we need to do to get all our ducks lined up in terms of what we have to do administration-wise, and all the rest of it.”

Since Graves spoke those words earlier this month, Yorkshire did not get one of the new women’s teams - the Tier 1 constructs which have instead seen control of the Northern Diamonds pass from Yorkshire to Durham from next year.

Clearly, Yorkshire have some thinking to do as to how they want to knit the various threads together and the composition at the top of their cricket department.

As Graves reflected: “Surrey might not even appoint a director of cricket going forward following the announcement that Alec Stewart will be stepping down. They are going to do what we’re doing; they’re going to look at this season and see what they need going forward, because in some ways the director of cricket role could be an outdated role.

“I can tell you now, it’s a massive job, but what you can’t have is a square peg in a round hole, and unfortunately that’s where we were, so from my perspective we will look at it, we will see what we need for the whole of the game – for men’s, women’s, the pathway, everything. We’re not going to rush it.”

One thing is for sure, Yorkshire would have no shortage of applicants/contenders. Despite everything that has gone on in recent times (in a nutshell, the effective destruction of the club as it once was), Yorkshire remain an attractive proposition.

A personal view is that someone with a close connection to the club would be perfect.

It could be argued, of course, that this has just been tried with Darren Gough, but it was Gough’s salary (£260,000) which did for him really on the basis that he was, effectively, receiving two salaries compared to some of his peers.

With finances tight and with Graves stating that the DoC role could be “outdated”, has he dropped a hint that the two traditional posts (DoC and head coach) could be combined?

Who knows.

At present, Yorkshire have a head coach in Ottis Gibson, who is halfway through a five-year plan to take the club back to the top of English cricket, which will also come into Graves’s thinking.

Clearly, Gough’s departure has created a vacancy in terms of how things stand, or at least how they stood, and various names have been mentioned on the grapevine.

Anthony McGrath, the head coach at Essex, could well be a contender at the end of the season – ditto the Australians Darren Lehmann and Jason Gillespie, despite media reports suggesting that Gillespie is about to take a role in the Pakistan set-up.

It is interesting to note, in fact, that of the three Championships that Yorkshire have won since the 1960s (in 2001, 2014 and 2015), they had an Australian in charge in, first, Wayne Clark and then Gillespie, who had five seasons of striking success.

McGrath would not be required to unearth any Australian links as his record also speaks for itself and all three men (McGrath, Lehmann and Gillespie) have a long association with – and love for – Yorkshire CCC.

The DoC role, if not outdated, has certainly changed in recent times. It is increasingly administrative, with clubs often favouring separate coaches. Everything will be factored in by Graves, who is now firmly ensconced again as the witch-hunt against him finally recedes. He has other decisions to make at the top too, with a new chief executive likely incoming and changes to the board.

Again, a personal view is that Yorkshire should get more young people involved at the club – those who actually understand mysterious words such as “cryptocurrency” and who, if they read the term “TikTok” in print, would not automatically imagine that the sound that a clock makes had been disastrously misspelled.

Why not have some 20/30-somethings on the board, shaping decisions and influencing strategy?

County cricket may be watched and indeed covered by those like me who can remember the days when if you wanted to ring one of your mates, you had to pop out to the nearest telephone box and wait there patiently in the rain for someone to finish their own riveting conversation, which you could usually hear through the glass.

But youth and fresh ideas are vital for county cricket’s future.