YORKSHIRE County Cricket Club chief executive Colin Graves has played down reports that he is on the brink of forming a new company which would buy Headingley cricket ground, writes David Warner.

Graves, who is also boss of the Costcutter chain of supermarkets, told the Evening Press: "Nothing has been finalised yet and this is only one option among loads which are open to me and the Yorkshire management board.

"We am taking a careful look at them all. There are so many tax implications involved and buying Headingley is not just like buying a house."

Yorkshire were confident at their annual meeting last March that come June they would have purchased the cricket side of operations at Headingley for around £15million from owner Paul Caddick, chairman of Leeds Tykes and Leeds Rhinos who play rugby on the other side of the grandstand.

But although Graves and Caddick are on excellent terms, a deal has not proved to be easy to complete and negotiations are expected to continue well into the New Year.

The Evening Press reported in September that it believed that Yorkshire's purchase of the ground would continue to be subject to delays and that predictions that everything would be settled by the end of the summer would be wide of the mark.

Yorkshire have already borrowed about £6m from the banks to pay for the redevelopment of the ground and finding another £15m may be proving harder than originally thought.

If Graves did form a new company to buy Headingley, it is believed he would hand the ground over to Yorkshire once that debt had been paid off from money coming in from the various income streams.

At the moment, however, Caddick remains Yorkshire's landlord with Graves still pondering which way forward will ultimately be in the county club's best interests.

Updated: 11:47 Friday, December 10, 2004