Azeem Rafiq’s allegations of racism left club stricken but the returning chairman is striving for promotion and stability
Colin Graves sits in the office of Yorkshire’s chief executive, Stephen Vaughan, looking out over the playing field at Headingley on a wet March afternoon, a week before the start of a new County Championship season. Nearly two months have passed since he returned to the club as chairman after a nine-year absence, a comeback that until relatively recently would have been completely unexpected and to some – if not to a membership that voted overwhelmingly to embrace it – unwelcome.
“Leaving here in 2015 I had no intention of coming back here one iota, in any shape or form whatsoever. I’d done my bit,” he says. “I got it on an even keel, left it in the hands of good people. It’s disappointing to see it has gone backwards, because if you look back to 2021 it was at the top of its game in every way. It was making profit, it was paying the debt down, producing players, we were doing well on the field. Everything was hunky-dory.”
