Yorkshire coaches fighting for jobs as Graves plans shake-up

YORKSHIRE’s coaching staff are being invited to reapply for their jobs in a move that will result in one redundancy.

The club, relegated from the Championship’s First Division, are restructuring their coaching operation beneath director of professional cricket Martyn Moxon.

Last season, Yorkshire had five coaches working under Moxon – Craig White (first team coach), Kevin Sharp (batting coach), Steve Oldham (academy director/bowling coach), Ian Dews (operations manager) and John Blain (second team coach/assistant bowling coach).

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Now Yorkshire are dispensing with those roles and looking to fill four new positions:

A senior coach to work primarily with the first team.

Another senior coach to manage and oversee the second XI.

A director of cricket development responsible for the Yorkshire Academy and the club’s age-group squads.

A development manager who will report to the director of cricket development.

The positions are being advertised nationally, which means more than one of the existing quintet could leave the club.

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Yorkshire chairman Colin Graves admitted he had an open mind about the identity of the four individuals who will be chosen to work under Moxon.

“It’s a blank canvas,” said Graves, who will interview candidates for the three senior coaching positions at Headingley a fortnight on Monday, with the development manager chosen at a later date.

“I have no preconceived ideas about who will be appointed to work with Martyn and we are inviting applications from experienced and well-qualified coaches.

“We’ll see what we get and I’m not going to pre-empt anything.

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“Some of the current coaches have said to me, ‘Will I get the job?’ and I’ve said, ‘It depends on who applies’.

“I have told them that if they’re the best person for the job and if they can fill the job description, they will get it. Simple as that.”

Graves denied the move was a cost-cutting exercise at a club some £20m in debt or a reaction to the club’s relegation to the County Championship Second Division.

He said it had been on the board’s mind for some time.

“We were on the verge of doing this last year,” he insisted. “It was always part of our plan to do this.

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“We want to take our coaching operation to the next level and believe this will be a more effective way of going about things.

“It’s following the type of format that England and Lancashire have adopted and it’s all about taking things to the next stage. It’s certainly not cost-cutting; it’s nothing to do with that at all.

“Nor does what happened on the field last season have anything to do with it.

“We would have done this before but we simply ran out of time last winter.

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“We had so many people away doing this, that and the other that we had to put it off.”

Graves said one of the board’s key objectives was to take pressure off Moxon.

He felt too much burden was being placed on the former Yorkshire and England opening batsman.

“We definitely wanted to take some of the load off Martyn,” he added. “In the past, we’ve had a flat structure all reporting in to Martyn; we’ve had something like eight people reporting to him in total, which was wrong.

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“Even people like Janet Bairstow, the administrator, was reporting directly to Martyn, the strength and conditioning coach was reporting to him, and so on.

“Martyn trying to manage eight people, with all the things that were going on at the club and the fact he was all over the country wasn’t ideal, so that was a big factor in wanting to put a better structure in place.”

Graves confirmed Yorkshire were still hoping to appoint a new chief executive in the not-too-distant future.

The club have been operating without a CEO since Stewart Regan left last year.

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“The plan was to advertise if not before Christmas then in early January,” said Graves. “There are a couple of things we need to sort out before we can do that, however.

“There is no immediate rush to bring in a new chief executive but it is something that will happen in the near future.

“It’s still on the agenda.”

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