Yorkshire chief executive Stephen Vaughan spells out financial issues

The Yorkshire chief executive, Stephen Vaughan, says anyone who could help assist the club with their financial difficulties would be “listened to seriously” for the chair vacancy, with Colin Graves having stated his interest in returning.

Vaughan spelt out the issues facing the club to members at the county’s annual general meeting on Friday night, highlighting a £3.5m cash shortfall this year, and the need to repay £14.9m to the Graves Trust.

A return for Graves would be controversial, with his first stint as chairman from 2012 and 2015 overlapping with Azeem Rafiq’s time at the club, a period in which the club have now admitted they failed to address the systemic use of racist and or discriminatory language. Nevertheless, he stated earlier this year he was ready to return “on his terms”.

Robin Smith, also a former county chairman and a long-standing associate of Graves, asked the board at the AGM why it was “prevaricating” on Graves’s return, urging it to “come to terms with Colin in short order and get rid of all this confusion and delay”.

Vaughan and the co-chair Baroness Grey-Thompson spoke during the meeting about the “robust process” being followed to recruit a replacement for outgoing chair Lord Kamlesh Patel.

After the AGM, Vaughan said: “Clearly, it wouldn’t be fair to talk about any people that may or may not be interested in that role. However, we’re very open to people that can do well for the club. When Lord Patel came in there was a remit for the chair at that time and it was obviously fairly transformational change, that remit has changed.

“Someone who can help with the refinancing of the club and can help us commercially going forward will be weighted very much as a key performance indicator. Anybody