The awarding of the Ashes venues for the '23 series in the U.K. this week puts England & Wales Cricket Board Chair Colin Graves "in a complicated position," according to Charles Sale of the London DAILY MAIL. The Graves family trust is owed around £22M ($30.4M) by Yorkshire, so Headingley hosting one of those five marquee test matches "would be very helpful to the county's bank balance." However, Headingley "faces stiff competition" from the other test-staging grounds, in particular Lord's and The Oval, which are "certain to host two Tests, as well as Edgbaston, Trent Bridge, Old Trafford, the Ageas Bowl and Sophia Gardens." The ECB said that Graves "played no part" in the independent panel which will put its recommendations -- done on a "totting-up points basis on strict criteria" -- to the ECB board on Wednesday, and that the ECB chair, along with other board members with "strong" county links, would withdraw from the discussions "if they felt conflicted in any way." Hampshire Chair Rod Bransgrove remains "remarkably optimistic that his beloved Ageas Bowl will be one of the favoured five." But that would mean three tests in the south of England, which "would cause uproar in the north" (DAILY MAIL, 2/11).
