by Colin Graves is about to make a controversial return as Yorkshire chairman after a turbulent, dramatic nine years, but in many ways he hasn’t really left. After keeping the club afloat with a series of cash injections Graves resigned in March 2015 with the promise that “Colin Graves’ bank was gone”; in fact he did no such thing.
Graves started his career as a teenager on the shop floor at Spar and made millions after founding Costcutter in 1986. He first joined Yorkshire in 2002 as one of the so-called “Gang of Four”. – along with future chairman Robin Smith, former spinner Geoff Cope, who played 246 first-class games for Yorkshire and three Tests for England, and Brian Boutell, former partner at accountancy firm KPMG – who d he succeeded in rescuing the club from imminent bankruptcy.
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“Why did I do it? Plain and simple I couldn’t sit there and watch Yorkshire County Cricket Club lose,” he said in 2014, after the club won the County Championship for the first time in 13 years, the first of back to back titles.
For a while, he seemed to have the magic touch. Graves joined the ECB board in 2010, became deputy chairman in 2013 and was elected unopposed for a five-year term as chairman two years later, prompting his departure from Yorkshire. During his time at the ECB, England won the men’s and women’s 50-over World Cups, both in dramatic finals at Lord’s. But he also became an increasingly controversial and divisive figure, pushing through the introduction of Centuries and suggesting that it would be “better for everyone in the game” if certain counties became first-class cricketers and focus on white ball formats. In 2018, Andy Nash, former Somerset chairman and ECB board member for 14 years, resigned claiming that “standards of corporate governance are falling well below what is acceptable”.
But since Azeem Rafiq spoke out about his experience of racism at Yorkshire Graves’ reputation has taken a toxic turn. Since Rafiq first went public in 2020 the club admitted he was a victim of racial harassment as well as bullying during his time at Headingley. Last February, they also admitted responsibility for four charges brought by the ECB, including a “failure to address the systematic use of racist and/or discriminatory language over a long period”, including a large part of the time Graves was involved, and his entire tenure. as a chair.
But Graves never made such a concession. Asked last June if he had seen any racism at Yorkshire, he said: “Nothing at all, from anyone at any level. Nothing.” He said there may have been the “odd occasions” when problematic language was used in the dressing room, but added: “I don’t think it was done on a racist, savage basis. I think there was enough there, and I know people don’t like the word banter, but I think there could be a lot of banter about it.”
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Over time, two different approaches to the club’s handling of allegations of racism emerged. One, led by the former chairman, Lord Kamlesh Patel, suggested that they should enter a qualified plea of guilty and do whatever was necessary to rebuild their reputation. The other club, led by Graves and Smith, argued that the club has nothing to admit and that attention should be focused on questions about the processes being used against them or over Rafiq’s own character. Smith, for example, described one DCMS hearing at which Rafiq spoke as “a disgrace, a charade and a blatant show trial”, and the ECB’s handling of charges to its Cricket Disciplinary Commission as a “dereliction of duty”.
Meanwhile, aggravated by the pandemic and the resignation of sponsors who followed Rafiq’s initial testimony to the DCMS, Yorkshire was thrown back into the kind of financial turmoil from which Graves had rescued them two decades earlier. . He continued to lend money to the club during his time as chairman but recently £500,000 a year had to be found to finance that debt, which according to his latest accounts was £14.9m, which pushed them back towards the financial risk. Under the terms of their loan, the Graves Family Trust would almost certainly take control of their main assets, including their home in Headingley, should the club go into administration.
The extent to which Graves continued to apply his financial interests to the day-to-day running of the club is debatable. When he joined the ECB his loans were consolidated under a family trust to avoid a conflict of interest and Smith, who spent two years as chairman from 2018, said the trust “never bothered him” and that Graves ” ever meant”. But Roger Hutton, the chairman from April 2020 to November 2021, said Graves had “a significant impact on the club throughout my tenure as chairman”. Graves replied that “all I ever did was offer advice and help”.
Julian Knight MP, chairman of the DCMS committee, said evidence showed Graves had caused “substantial and persistent interference”, but the 75-year-old repeatedly refused invitations to give evidence.
Talk of investment from Saudi or Indian consortiums or a sale to former Newcastle owner Mike Ashley has increased over the past 18 months but has come to nothing. It seems that Graves’ return – and the formality of confirmation by the members’ CGU – is only days away. He is said to be ready to lend the club another £4m. Far from being severed nearly a decade ago, the ties that bind Yorkshire to it continue to tighten.
