Yorkshire accelerate plans to find new CEO after Graves is elected to ECB role

YORKSHIRE County Cricket Club have brought forward plans to appoint a new chief executive after Colin Graves won the battle to become English cricket’s No 2.
Colin GravesColin Graves
Colin Graves

Graves, the Yorkshire executive chairman, has been nominated by his fellow county chiefs and the MCC to become deputy chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board as right-hand man to chairman Giles Clark.

Graves defeated Nigel Hilliard, chairman of Essex, in a secret ballot by 10 votes to seven with two abstentions.

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His appointment in succession to former England batsman Dennis Amiss is expected to be a formality at the ECB’s annual meeting in May.

Although Graves will remain actively involved with Yorkshire, who are bankrolled by his personal fortune, his heightened profile at the ECB means Yorkshire have expedited plans to recruit a CEO.

They have been without a chief executive since 2010, when Stewart Regan left to take up the same position at the Scottish Football Association, with Graves assuming key responsibilities in the interim to help Yorkshire through a difficult financial period.

The club had planned to look for a CEO later this year, and although a new appointment would take pressure off Graves, he will remain in charge of the purse strings.

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Yorkshire will today announce a loss of £118,000 for 2012, a shortfall they largely attribute to last year’s bad weather – which saw the loss of around 40 per cent of playing time and the abandonment of the Headingley one-day international – plus the effect of the Olympics, which clashed with the Headingley Test and impacted on corporate hospitality sales.

“We will be looking to appoint a new chief executive sooner rather than later,” said Graves, who will serve three years as ECB deputy chairman. “We were going to do it anyway this year, so we’re just bringing the process forward.

“We haven’t got anyone in mind and we will advertise on our website and on the ECB website in the next two weeks.

“When the new person is appointed, I’ll revert back to being just a normal chairman.”

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Graves, who said he was honoured to have been nominated for the ECB role by his fellow counties, believes Yorkshire’s new CEO will take charge of a club in robust health.

Although the club are £22m in debt, and indeed paid more than £1m in debt interest last year, they are budgeted to clear their arrears by 2023, while turnover last year rose from £5.4m to £7.8m after Test cricket returned to Headingley after a one-year hiatus.

“We’re a lot more stable now, we’re not under the pressures we were and we have a business plan that everyone’s bought into,” added Graves.

“We’ve got a Test match guaranteed for each of the next seven years, and there’s not many clubs that can say that.

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“When you look at the year we had with the weather, which saw us lose a huge amount of playing time and suffer the one-day international being washed out, and when you consider that the Olympics were going on during the Test match, we did well.

“We can’t complain, to be fair, and everything’s going in the right direction.”

In their 2012 financial report, which they will present to members at their annual meeting at Headingley on Saturday, March 30 (10.00am start), Yorkshire will also cite the “exceptional costs” of £109,000 relating to redundancy and restructuring outlays following changes to their coaching and administrative staff.

The coaching overhaul was far-reaching and included the recruitment of former Australia fast bowler Jason Gillespie, who helped the club to County Championship promotion last season, along with a first visit to Twenty20 Finals Day and a trip to the Twenty20 Champions League in South Africa.

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Yorkshire hope to record a financial surplus next year, although much will depend on ticket sales for the Headingley Test against New Zealand in May.

The club have already sold around three-quarters of capacity for the one-day international against Australia in September.

Key figures from annual report

Deficit after taxation – £118,000 (2011: £460,000).

Turnover – £7.8m (2011: £5.4m).

Cricket expenses – £2.7m (2011: £2.5m).