Yorkshire’s coaching structure would have been overhauled even had they avoided relegation from the LV=County Championship Division One last summer.

In fact, change would have come even had the Tykes been crowned champions!

That was the admission made by director of professional cricket Martyn Moxon earlier this week after unveiling a new four-man team of Jason Gill-espie, Paul Farbrace, Ian Dews and Richard Damms.

“Even if we had won the Championship, this probably would have still happened,” he said.

“The coaching structure is something we’ve been looking at over the last two years, certainly the last 12 months.

“I guess it’s unfortunate that it’s tied in with relegation. It could be seen as a knee-jerk reaction but it certainly isn’t.

“As part of the restructuring, we felt that people had to have specific responsibilities rather than being general batting and bowling coaches.

“Before this, I had eight people reporting to me, which is time consuming. Now three people report to me. That’s Jason, Paul and Ian.

“I’ll be floating around and giving assistance wherever I need to. It gives me more flexibility.”

Moxon, Andrew Gale, Michael Vaughan, Geoff Boycott, Michael Fordham, a former management consultancy lecturer at the University of Bradford, and club chairman Colin Graves all played key roles in the interview process.

Graves famously tore into his players in September, brandishing their performances “a disgrace”, and laying the blame for relegation firmly at their door.

But it is the former coaches – Craig White, Kevin Sharp, Steve Oldham and John Blain – who have all left Headingley.

Graves said: “The coaches haven’t been the fall guys because we haven’t been happy with the coaching structure for the last two years. I wanted to change it a year ago, but Martyn didn’t for various reasons.

“There’s no point looking back because we are where we are, which is in Division Two. We’ve put building blocks in place to succeed. Hopefully we can get off to a good start.”

And, as for the financial side of reducing the coaching staff from six to five, he added: “It’s a big financial commitment.

“If people think we’ve done this to chop our costs with one less person in the coaching staff than we had, our costs are not a million miles away from where they were.

“These guys are expensive, but we want results. We’ve said the same thing to the players as well. We’re quite happy to give the contracts even though the cash isn’t booming out of our ears – as long as we get results.”