Yorkshire CCC approve Colin Graves' takeover deal

Yorkshire owe circa £16m to the Graves Family Trust and have various creditors, which has led them to the brink of administration.

They have effectively been hollowed out financially due to costs associated with the racism crisis.

Graves is expected to supply an immediate unsecured loan of £1m, with a further £4m set to be raised in the short term from other investors. The club is set to be turned into a limited company that will turn debt into equity.

Graves will conduct an overhaul of the board – although Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Leslie Ferrar and Trevor Strain will stay in the short-term at least to help form a quorum.

The new team is set to include Sanjay Patel, the architect of The Hundred, Phillip Hodson, a former MCC president, and former ECB non-executive director Sanjeev Gandhi. Gordon Hollins, the outgoing chief executive of Somerset, has also been linked with a role.

The takeover is subject to members’ approval at an extraordinary general meeting, which is set to take place on February 2.

The Yorkshire club statement read: “The board of Yorkshire County Cricket Club has tonight agreed to recommend the loan agreement from Mr Colin Graves.

"The club will be sending a notice to members tomorrow (Thursday 11th January) ahead of an EGM which will outline the details of the offer as well as the resolutions and rule changes that are required to be ratified by members at the EGM.”

As previously reported in The Yorkshire Post, Graves is also set to issue a full and unreserved apology to anyone who has experienced discrimination at Yorkshire when he takes back the reins, having previously been the club’s chair and CEO.

He will also make clear how much he regrets some of the language that he personally has used when discussing the crisis.

The 75-year-old was criticised last summer for suggesting in a television interview that there may have been “a lot of banter” about comments that might have been uttered in previous dressing rooms - as opposed to anything that was said “on a racist, savage basis”.

Graves qualified that comment by saying that such remarks were still unacceptable.

Graves will look to continue – and indeed build on – the work that has been carried out at Yorkshire since the allegations levelled by former player Azeem Rafiq, and also to accept the findings and recommendations of the recent Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report.

He will conduct a root-and-branch review of the club and has the full backing of the England and Wales Cricket Board.