HARRY CHATHLI believes that Yorkshire’s focus can start to turn back to events on the field as opposed to those off it as the club prepares for the final hurdle in the racism saga.

The Yorkshire chairman-elect will be in London on Tuesday, along with the club’s chief executive Stephen Vaughan and other board members, for a sanctions hearing of the Cricket Discipline Commission (CDC).

The Yorkshire regime of Lord Kamlesh Patel, the previous chairman, admitted to four charges in connection with the crisis and the club will likely receive a fine and/or points deductions, although that is expected to be confirmed at a later date.

It is the final part of a process that has rumbled on for almost three years and which has taken concentration very much away from the club’s main business - that of winning cricket matches.

Welcome aboard: Harry Chathli, right, the new Yorkshire CCC chairman-elect, pictured at Headingley on day one of the County Championship match against Gloucestershire along with Stephen Vaughan, the club's chief executive, and Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, the interim chair. Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com

“This is just an event now,” said Chathli of the CDC hearing.

“Real progress has been made at Yorkshire; the changes have already been made.

“The focus is now turning back to cricket and, moving forward, I think the whole club has to come back to talking about cricket and cricket excellence on the pitch.

“I personally see the CDC as an event, an important event, but an event that’s connected with the past, not with the future, so to speak.”

Chathli, 58, is expecting this to be a watershed week for the game in general, with the long-awaited report of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) also due to be published on Tuesday.

All indications are that it will make for uncomfortable reading – as well as highlighting how this was never simply a Yorkshire issue.

“It’s an important week, and I think the spotlight will be not so much on Yorkshire cricket as on English cricket,” he added.

“It will be English cricket’s opportunity to look at itself in the mirror, see what the state of play is and what it needs to be doing going forward.

“The CDC part is one part that we are involved in, but for English cricket it’s all about the ICEC, looking at the hard facts, because I think it will be tough.

“I think English cricket is going to have a rude awakening in many senses, and it’s a watershed moment for the game to look at itself and see where we are as a game and what we need to do going forward.”

As that report is published and processed, following legal problems and various delays, Chathli feels that Yorkshire are well-placed to lead the way among the first-class counties.

The club has gone through seismic changes in recent times and, as such, is ‘ahead of the curve’.

“We’re 18 months ahead,” said Chathli. “If I used a business term, we’re market leaders, so to speak.

“We already have set in motion a huge amount of things, if you look at the pathway programme, if you look at the corporate governance side of things, the EDI stuff that we’ve progressed - we’ve moved things along to a great degree.

“Essentially, if somebody wants to come and take a look at us and say, ‘Is this a template that we can use across other parts of England?’ the short answer is ‘Yes’, while we’re always learning and trying to get better.”

Harry Chathli keen to put cricket first as Yorkshire CCC move on from scandal