It isn’t often that Yorkshire men and women bite their tongues when it comes to cricket. But the tumult of the past few years, Azeem Rafiq’s revelations of what the Cricket Discipline Commission called “a culture of discrimination” at Headingley, the unfair dismissal of 16 members of staff, the docking of Championship points, the heightened emotions, the cruelty of the online spats and the money troubles, oh the money troubles, have all had an effect.
Now a saviour has arrived, looking very much like the old saviour, Colin Graves, he of the rescue bid in 2002, and the club chair from 2007 to 2015. The club are heavily in Graves’s debt and he has offered once again to ride to the rescue – with an instant £1m and another £4m over a five-month period – so long as members vote him in as chair at the EGM at Headingley on Friday morning.
