Yorkshire CCC “fully committed” to Colin Graves deal

The Daily Telegraph reported that the deal is being scuppered by the two member representatives on the board - John Jackson and Richard Levin.

They were said to be “holding out against Graves’s demand that the majority of directors resign” and that “Graves is promising to replace both with new member representatives at the next annual general meeting”.

Although Graves will indeed bring in his own team, which The Yorkshire Post understands would ideally include none of the current board but may perhaps contain the odd ‘survivor’ if circumstances dictate, the club insisted on Friday that no board member wanted to block a deal that would avert administration.

Harry Chathli, the Yorkshire chair, made it clear: “The full board is united and committed to doing the deal, which includes the two member representatives.

“Everyone on the board is saying – ‘this is the only game in town, and we’re going to do it’.”

At face value, it seems absurd that two member representatives could, in theory, dig in their heels and, as a result, a club could go under.

With all due respect to Jackson and Levin, they are small fish in the bigger pond of the 12-strong board per se, regardless of any personal reservations they may or may not hold.

Graves has requested – apparently for the purposes of forming a quorum – for three board members to stay in situ to facilitate the new dawn.

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Leslie Ferrar and Trevor Strain are understood to be set to oblige.

Graves will bring in a number of new faces which, The Yorkshire Post understands, could include Gordon Hollins, the outgoing Somerset chief executive and previously the England and Wales Cricket Board’s managing director of county cricket.

Sanjay Patel, the architect of The Hundred, has also reportedly been lined up along with Sanjeev Gandhi, previously an ECB non-executive director.

All those linked with the club have a good track record.

Meanwhile, efforts to discredit Graves and to prevent him from returning continue to gather pace in all the usual quarters.

The intervention of Clive Efford MP, however, who stated on Thursday that it would be “a disaster” if Graves returned, perhaps represented a new low in political interference in a wider crisis in which one of the biggest disasters has, in fact, been the politicians’ inept handling – or rather non-handling in some instances – of events.

Efford, part of the Digital Culture Media and Sport select committee (now the CMS committee), believes that Graves would be a retrograde step given that he was Yorkshire chair when the club allegedly had a toxic culture.

However, the ECB is understood to be fully supportive of Graves’s return, rendering such shouting into the wilderness as futile as that of an untethered astronaut drifting off into outer space.