COlin Graves is sitting in the office of the Yorkshire chief executive, Stephen Vaughan, looking out across the playing field at Headingley on a wet March afternoon, a week before the start of the new County Championship season. It’s been almost two months since they returned to the club as Chairman after a nine-year absence, a return that until relatively recently would have been completely unexpected and for some – if not for the membership that voted overwhelmingly to adopt it – unwelcome.
“After leaving here in 2015, I had no intention of coming back here in the slightest, in any shape or form. I did my job,” he says. “I got it on an equal footing, left it in good people’s hands. It’s disappointing to see it go backwards, because if you look back at 2021 it was at the top of its game in every way. It was making profits, it was paying off debts, it was producing players, we were performing well on the field. Everything was very good.”
And then it was not so. This was the year that Azeem Rafiq’s allegations of racism at the club and Yorkshire’s handling of them came to light. Rafik spoke publicly about his experiences for the first time in 2020, and an independent review appointed by the club submitted a report the following summer that dismissed the abuse as a “joke” and said that ” It was not right for Azeem to be angry. yorkshire Acknowledged that Rafiq had been “the victim of racial harassment”, but attempted to keep the report private and said no employees would face disciplinary action.
The England and Wales Cricket Board described Rafiq’s experiences as “disgusting” and the way Yorkshire dealt with him as “completely unacceptable”, banning him temporarily. hosting international matches, and a succession of major sponsors departed. By the end of the year their president had resigned and their entire coaching staff was dismissed. Things fell apart on and off the field, focusing first on repairing the damage done to the club’s reputation and then to its finances.
And last year Yorkshire were relegated to Division Two of the County Championship amid fears of impending administration. 48 marks deducted The team finished seventh out of eight teams (without the deduction they would have been third), due to the ECB’s poor handling of the Rafiq case. Sixteen employees were dismissed in December 2021 in response to Rafiq’s experiences, decisions that led to millions of pounds in compensation payments. Graves dismissed reports that any of them were going to return, but said that they would be welcome to apply for positions at the club and asked if he would be interested in how to run it in his absence. were surprised by, he said, “the most disappointing thing”. “Some decisions that were not good for the club, were not good for the individuals and they had to suffer the consequences.”
But now, the club’s hope, the instability, is gone. Harry Brook and Joe Root are aiming for promotion as they strengthen the squad in the opening weeks of the season. When Graves was asked what the mission was, he raised his index finger: First place. He says, “What I’ve said to the players and coaches and everyone else is: ‘Yorkshire shouldn’t be in the Second Division’, it’s that simple.” “Forget all the excuses, go out there, enjoy your cricket, and get us back to first class.”
In many ways this will be a transitional year. They are recruiting their own executive and are looking to replace the recently departed Darren Gough, who was the highest-paid director of cricket in the country – “I was very surprised,” Graves says of his contract. ” “It was certainly not within the scope of what a county cricket club could afford.” There is no possibility of appointment before September. “As soon as a high-profile role became available at the club, my phone didn’t stop, my emails didn’t stop, the same thing happened with Colin,” says Vaughan, as Graves’ phone rings with dramatic timing.
Yorkshire has bid to host one of the eight professional women’s teams that will play in a new competition starting next season, and are expected to hear the outcome in the next few weeks. He supported his proposal with an analysis of the growing popularity of the sport in the county – the number of girls’ and women’s cricket teams in Yorkshire has tripled since 2020 Till 302. The club’s focus on improving diversity and outreach since the start of 2021 has, in Vaughan’s words, reached “a very, very high level of compliance, almost overachievement”.
Membership is reported to be at its highest level in five years. There are talks with “two or three concert promoters” looking for additional revenue streams about hosting events at the arena next summer, which would be their first since Madness was played in 2015. “Honestly, I think it’s an exciting time,” Graves says. “And that’s not just because I’m sitting here, it’s because I think we’re over that crisis. Now we are going down that hill to the other side.”
I ask whether Graves, aged 76, is energized by his return to Yorkshire and the challenge of reviving a club he once saved as part of the so-called “Gang of Four” in 2002 . He steps back, literally horrified: “No, for Christ’s sake. You must be joking.”
He points beyond the window. “In 2002 virtually none of this was done. We didn’t even have a blade of grass there. We had nothing. We had a rugby lease and we owed the bank £5 million. I built a successful business (supermarket chain Costcutter) from scratch, from a blank piece of paper. I went to the ECB (in 2015) – there was bloody chaos when I went there. I turned it around in six years, we got the biggest broadcasting deal, we launched The Hundred, we won the Women’s World Cup, we won the Men’s World Cup. I have my own family business that I run. I’m president of a subsidiary of the co-op, so I’m doing that, and I live on a 135-acre farm. I think there have been one or two challenges in my life. I was definitely sitting at home doing nothing.”
Although it was presented as the only way to save the club from impending financial disaster, Graves’ return has been controversial. A vote by the members at the EGM was required to confirm the Board’s approval of the deal and whereas the motion was passed with 88% in favour; Only a quarter of the 3,500 members voted. Past and present supporters were seen divided on the field, Rafiq was disappointed, calling it a “failure of leadership…and governance.”
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Graves was at Yorkshire for most of Rafiq’s tenure as chairman, but has denied any knowledge of any issues of racism. “If I had seen something or heard something, something would have been done about it, it’s that simple,” he says. “It would have been processed that day, that very minute, because that’s how I work.”
Last year Graves suggested that what Rafiq experienced could be classified as a “joke” (seven months later, and just before the membership voted on his return, he apologized for those comments. ). Rafik has criticized him for showing “no remorse to date” and still says he would not do anything differently, and that he was right to remain silent as the scandal ruined the club. “I was out of cricket,” he says. “Nobody pointed a finger at me and said: ‘Colin Graves knew this’, or: ‘Colin Graves knew this’. So why should I keep my head above the roof?”
Graves clearly feels that, despite everything, his return should have inspired hosannas rather than hostility, and is appalled by the damage the Rafiq affair has done to his own reputation. “It was painful, to be honest,” he says.
“My name was never taken in any investigation, my name was never mentioned. So for people who don’t know me to say things about me, I think that was very harsh. And to start saying that I shouldn’t come back to Headingley for reasons that are still unknown, I still can’t get my head around it. Because the only reason for doing so was to save Yorkshire Cricket Club. It certainly wasn’t for my own benefit. And when I’ve got this place back on its feet, I’m moving forward – I’ve done it successfully before, and I’ll do it successfully again. “To be honest, it hurt a lot.”
Graves bought himself a chance to improve his and his club’s reputation, secure their long-term future, continue the outreach and diversity work started under his predecessors Kamlesh Patel and Harry Chaithley, and oversee improvements on the pitch. Is. And to decisively change the conversation that has been disappointing in recent days.
Vaughan says: “It would be nice in a year’s time, if you took a straw poll between Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester and you talked about Yorkshire cricket, they probably mentioned one player, or one from Headingley. Talked about, or you know, amazing taste, whatever.
“Yes, we are in the news for the wrong reasons, but we want to bring smiles back on people’s faces. I think we’re at the beginning of that journey now. This time last year we were having a dozen conversations a day with different funding companies, we were getting ready for legal talks with the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Cricket Disciplinary Commission. We feel a million miles away from him now. “We get some nice weather and we can start focusing on what we came here for.”
