Yorkshire will not launch bid for Ashes Tests

The county cricket club yesterday revealed a loss of nearly £2m in 2010 – on top of existing debts of £19.79m – a figure brought about largely by the poor attendances for the Pakistan versus Australia Test match last July.

It is their first negative return for five years and with only one day of international cricket scheduled for the summer ahead – an ODI against Sri Lanka on July 1 – fortunes could get worse before they get better for all involved at Yorkshire CCC.

A further £1.08m is budgeted to be lost this year before the club can look at regaining a sound financial footing in 2012 when their staging agreement with the ECB guarantees them one England Test match plus a one-day international at the ground until 2019.

Ashes Test matches are also up for grabs for the 2013 and 2015 series, with Yorkshire one of nine county grounds with Test match status allowed to bid for the right to host a match in the biggest and most lucrative series in cricket.

However, staging a bid to host an Ashes Test has no guarantee of success and could cost the county as much as £2m, which is a risk the club’s chief executive and chairman Colin Graves is not willing to take.

“There’s no chance at all of us hosting an Ashes Test,” he said yesterday.

“For 2013 and 2015 we are not allocated an Ashes Test match, we won’t be allocated one, and we aren’t going to bid for one to put ourselves at risk again.

“The figure is not fixed but it could cost anything between £1m and £2m to make a bid.

“I’m not putting between £1m and £2m at risk because it’s not worth it. I’d rather stick with what we’ve got.”

The club’s finance director Charles Hartwell added that trying to win an Ashes Test would amount to over-extending themselves, even though last year’s construction of the £21m Carnegie Pavillion was done with international cricket in mind.

He explained: “Revenue from an Ashes Test outweighs what would be brought in against other Test-match opponents.

“But our appetite for risk is minimal.

“We are safe in the knowledge that we have Test matches every year from 2012 and we know pretty much what money that will bring in and how much that will help us.

“The business plan of the club is that the investment in the ground was done to secure international cricket, which we have achieved with the staging agreement.

“Profits from England games will contribute to paying off those debts by 2019.

“The debt stands at £19m but our assets are now worth £29m.”

Such a prudent financial approach could yet place question marks over Headingley’s future international Test match status.

Their rivals for the right to host Ashes Test matches are all set to enter the bidding war for the next two series, with near-neighbours Lancashire having undertaken ground and pitch renovations to improve their chances. Durham’s Riverside is already one of only two grounds confirmed as hosts for a 2013 Ashes Test while Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens and Hampshire’s Rose Bowl are further stadiums on the rise.

Any success they might have over the next two series could put them in a stronger position to edge out the more traditional venue of Headingley, assuming Yorkshire decide to re-enter the race in 2019.

England Test matches against any opposition are traditionally greeted by a sell-out crowd at Headingley.

South Africa are the next Test match visitors to Headingley in 2012 and under the staging agreement there are guarantees of six days of cricket until 2019.

However, in Australia’s absence in 2013 and 2015, the Yorkshire public will have to make do with Tests against less-attractive nations, as was the case in 2005, the last time the county missed out on hosting an Ashes Test and ended up staging a five-day match with Bangladesh.

New Zealand are the scheduled visitors in 2013 while the Black Caps and Pakistan are both pencilled in to tour England in 2015 – all of which are fixtures Yorkshire could host in an Ashes year.

Yorkshire’s exact deficit for 2010 was £1,859,009, around £1m of which can be directly attributed to the failure of the MCC Spirit of Cricket Test match between Pakistan and Australia, when less than 25 per cent of the ground’s 16,000 seats were filled.

Despite the loss and the void in revenue from future Ashes Test matches, Graves remains confident this is a hole which Yorkshire can dig themselves out of.

He said: “This is a blip and we could have done without it. It has given us a few hiccoughs but we’ve got over that now.

“2011 will be tough because we’ve only got a one-day international, which is going to make income very tight.

“But we are far from being sunk, we’ve got a very sound business going forward.

“We’ve got Test matches from 2012 to 2019, and from our point of view there’s no major problems around the corner at all.”

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