Let's get behind Colin Graves and put an end to the toxicity around Yorkshire CCC - Chris Waters

Three-and-a-half years in which the toxicity meter - in recent days almost as overloaded as it was at the peak of the racism crisis in November 2021 - has rarely, if ever, been out of the red zone.

Three-and-a-half years of what can only be described as unrelenting misery.

At some point - i.e., now - that situation needs to end. At some point, for the good of everyone concerned, for their mental and physical health, let alone for the future of England’s greatest club, there has to be an effort to move on from the past.

If not, then one would have to suspect very strongly the motives of anybody who would instead like to see the toxicity continue.

Otherwise, the only good thing to come out of the crisis - a heightened awareness that we are all brothers and sisters living under the same old sky, on a very small rock in a particularly insignificant corner of an unimaginably large universe - will be wasted, drowned in an endless sea of bitterness and hostility.

Into as acrid an atmosphere as cricket can have known, perhaps any sport can have known, Colin Graves may seem an unlikely pivot for the harmony required.

After all, the former chair of the England and Wales Cricket Board has made a career out of splitting opinion, not least with The Hundred, a tournament I wouldn’t go to the bottom of the garden to watch at gunpoint whereas others might give their lives simply for the glimpse of a ticket, and he was at Yorkshire for part of the time when the allegations against them were levelled and accepted by the Lord Patel regime.

But Graves as a focal point for rage, as a hark back to ‘the bad old days’? It’s absurdly unfair.

Wouldn’t the two or three people who actually did admit to any charges, just for the sake of argument, be a better focal point, as opposed to someone who said that he saw no racism, received no complaints about it, wasn’t named in any of the investigations and wasn’t even at the club during the principal complainant’s second spell?

And yet Graves is the one under fire, Graves the one who has been summoned to appear before the Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) select committee next month, Graves the one who has been the victim of a concerted, apparently co-ordinated attack.

Indeed, the list of those who have had a go at him - often in the most outspoken way - include all the usual suspects plus the charity Sporting Equals and MPs Clive Efford and Alex Sobel.

Why, less of an outcry might have been expected had the Yorkshire board dug up Genghis Khan and said: “Hey, Genghis, welcome to 2024, old lad. Wanna buy a cricket club?”

But, seriously, what is this? Isn’t it time to move on? Graves has apologised. His statement on Thursday - acknowledging the past and pledging action in the future - struck exactly the right tone.

Yes, actions do speak louder than words, as his critics will say, but at least give him a chance and judge him now on what unfolds.

The predicament facing the Yorkshire board was stark.

Forget laughable claims that the club simply didn’t bother to speak to viable alternatives. Indeed, as most, if not all of those board members are now going to lose their positions, with Graves wanting a clearout, why would they do that?

Would a turkey, presented with a choice between voting for Christmas or Easter, willingly put an ‘X’ next to the winter festival on its ballot paper?

As Harry Chathli, the outgoing chair, said in his letter recommending that members vote for Graves at next month’s EGM, the club hunted high and low - for over a year - for viable partners in the UK, America, the Middle East, India, and so on.

So, what scuppered them? Well, would you want to buy a club with no money, lots of debt and with a racism scandal hanging on its flagpole if, unlike Graves, you weren’t personally connected? Quite.

And so we have reached a situation where it really is, if one pardons the term, ‘Graves or the grave’.

Either the club’s members back him - or the club goes under.

Even then, the situation is not suddenly all hunky-dory.

As the board states in the EGM papers, under the heading “risk factors” and referencing an immediate investment promised by Graves, “the timing of receipt and the amount of that further £4m investment may not be sufficient to meet the club’s liabilities at a particular point in the future without further temporary support from lenders or the ECB”.

In other words, the battle goes on.

Best that the battle is overseen by someone who has saved the club before, knows it inside out and cares about it deeply.

But, beyond that, it’s time to move forward. Three-and-a-half years...