While Yorkshire are still anguishing over the appointment of a commercial manager to replace marketing supremo Mark Newton, Harrogate Cricket Club are continuing to rebuild their St George's Road ground under the guidance of their astute general manager, Mick Scaife.

This week the club were able to announce that Bass Brewers had become their main sponsors in a two-year deal worth £40,000 and Scaife said this enabled them to embark with confidence on ambitious redevelopment plans which were outlined in detail during the winter.

One piece of tidying up already completed concerns the tea room which forms part of the historic pavilion and is familiar to supporters of Harrogate and those Yorkshire members who visited St George's Road in the days that Championship cricket took place there.

With the old fittings having been removed, the room is now spacious enough to be used for special functions and its walls have been adorned with many historic cricket photographs which have been unearthed at the ground.

There are pictures of Yorkshire and Harrogate teams going back to the turn of the century and a large framed photograph of the opening of the pavilion in 1896.

Not all the photographs have been taken on the ground, however, and one of them shows Colin Cowdrey, Frank Woolley and Leslie Ames pictured in front of the Woolley stand at the St Lawrence ground at Canterbury. How that became part of the Harrogate collection remains something of a mystery.

Meanwhile, Harrogate have spruced up their ground by installing some of the bucket seats from Yorkshire's recently demolished Western Terrace at Headingley.

And the club have every intention of pressing Yorkshire for a return of county cricket to St George's Road, even though it is accepted that they will not change their policy of playing all home games at Headingley and Scarborough for a couple of years yet.

"First of all we need to show Yorkshire that the games we do stage are done very well and as our facilities improve so will our chances of them coming back," said Scaife, a former general manager of York Rugby League Club.

On the Yorkshire front, no successor has yet been announced for Newton, who last month moved to Worcestershire where he has taken over as chief executive from Michael Vockins.

Vockins served at New Road from 1972, the year he filled the secretary's chair which was vacated when Joe Lister moved back to take charge of his native Yorkshire.