Trouble at t'mill for Yorkshire

The new county season is just weeks away, but the mood up at Yorkshire is fractious to say the least. At their recent AGM, the county's executive chairman Colin Graves attempted to defend the controversial £21 million pavilion at Headingley, which was officially opened during the Pakistan-Australia Test match last summer.

Chris Waters of The Yorkshire Evening Post was there to hear Graves claim that the club had received numerous positive comments for “one of the best facilities in English cricket”.

At the risk of sounding like a wet blanket, one wondered to whom Graves was actually referring.

Was he referring to Yorkshire’s electronic scoreboard operator, who resigned in protest over the fact his seat in the pavilion does not afford him a view of the electronic scoreboard?

Was he referring to Yorkshire’s players, some of whom were said to be so unhappy with their facilities they wanted to move back to their old position on the other side of the ground?

Was he referring to Australia captain Ricky Ponting, who was heard to remark during last summer’s Australia versus Pakistan Test: “If we ever have to come back to this place again, it will be too soon."

And Yorkshire is also the focus of a piece by Tanya Aldred in The Daily Telegraph, as she reflects on the potential impact of the BBC's planned cull of regional radio.

Dave Callaghan, who does 31 reports a day during the season for the five interested local BBC stations, is a cricket obsessive, a Yorkshire geek, and a broadcasting pro. But he, and hundreds of others like him, with a byzantine sporting knowledge built up over thousands of balls, and hundreds of polystyrene cups of strong tea, could disappear if the BBC go ahead with their plan to swing the axe at local radio.