Yorkshire Cricket Club Cleared of Charges Over £1.75m Payment to CEO's Company

Yorkshire have escaped without charges from the Cricket Regulator after a formal investigation into a £1.75m payment the county made to a company controlled by the club’s chief executive, Sanjay Patel, for work on the sale of the Northern Superchargers Hundred franchise.

The Guardian revealed in June that the England and Wales Cricket Board was reviewing the consultancy fee, which related to the £100m sale of the Superchargers to the Sun Group last year, with the matter subsequently referred to the Cricket Regulator for a formal investigation.

Yorkshire’s 2025 accounts showed Patel’s company SMP73 Ltd received a commission of £1.75m for “corporate broker services in connection with the sale of Northern Superchargers Limited”, leading to concerns at Lord’s over the amount of money leaving the game and a possible conflict of interest.

Colin Graves, the Yorkshire chair, announced the case had been dropped without charges being issued at a members’ forum at Scarborough on Thursday, which he confirmed in an email sent to supporters on Friday.

“The Cricket Regulator completed a thorough investigation and has concluded that payments were made through satisfactory governance processes and decision-making structures and there is no further action required,” Graves wrote. “This matter is now closed.”

The ECB is understood to remain unimpressed by the size of Patel’s consultancy fee, however, particularly given the governing body engaged the US bank Raine Group to find investors for the eight franchises and run the auction process.

The Hundred sale raised £520m for the sport through selling stakes of between 49% and 100% to external investors, with Raine receiving about £12m in commission.

A source with knowledge of the Cricket Regulator’s investigation said the case was dropped because there was no evidence that Yorkshire’s actions constituted a breach of ECB regulations.

The fact SMP73’s work on the sale concluded before Patel’s formal appointment as chief executive in October 2025 is also understood to have been significant, although he was heavily involved at Yorkshire before and during the Hundred auction in February 2025, having been appointed as interim chief executive in September 2024.

Yorkshire were also the only county to sell 100% of their Hundred franchise, with most of the host counties opting to retain a 51% stake, a decision that may have increased SMP73’s consultancy fee.

In his email to members Graves confirmed the consultancy payment was related to the value of the sale price. “As I explained to members yesterday, the Board engaged Sanjay, through SMP73, because of his unrivalled knowledge of The Hundred and network across cricket,” he wrote. “We agreed a performance-related commission which would only become payable if he secured an outcome for the club in excess of an ambitious target set in relation to the sale of the Northern Superchargers. That target was exceeded, securing a transformational return for Yorkshire which enabled us to clear the club’s significant debt and put Yorkshire on a much stronger financial footing.”

Before joining Yorkshire Patel was one of the key architects of the Hundred when working alongside Graves, the then ECB chair, and was among a small group of executives who received bonuses worth a combined £2.1m from the governing body in 2022.

The ECB declined to comment.