FOLLOWING extensive planning and risk analysis, Yorkshire will now play their County Championship match against Lancashire at Headingley from Sunday, July 11.

The showcase match was due to be hosted at Scarborough Cricket Club following lockdown restrictions being lifted.

However, since the government’s decision to extend lockdown, Yorkshire Cricket and Scarborough Cricket Club have explored ways to stage the match in front of the maximum number of members, while creating a safe environment and following the current government guidance.

Both clubs had hoped that sports venues would be able to provide a larger capacity than 25 per cent, a number that has thrown up a number of challenges to satisfy spectator safety requirements.

To host a match with 25 per cent occupancy, certain criteria must be met, including demonstrating social distancing at entrances and exits, toilets, and minimising congestion around the venue.

Following extensive guidance and a professional ECB externally funded investigation, it has been determined that North Marine Road would not totally satisfy this criteria, and would therefore have its capacity reduced further to significantly below 2,000.

Due to this, Yorkshire and Scarborough have taken the difficult decision to move the match to Emerald Headingley.

Mark Arthur, Yorkshire’s chief executive said: “Firstly we are hugely disappointed to have to make this decision as we truly believed that this fixture would be unaffected.

“We were anticipating over 6,000 spectators each day for what would be a fantastic advert for county cricket.

“Following the extension of the government’s roadmap, we had hoped that social distancing guidelines would have been eased as the data continued to show encouraging signs.

“After exploring every possible avenue, we had to ensure that as many members as possible could attend the match.

“Staging the match at Scarborough under the current restrictions would leave many of our members disappointed.

“Therefore, we believe that the fairest and most pragmatic decision was to host the match at a venue that has satisfied safety requirements and can comfortably cater for Yorkshire members.

“We are extremely sorry to those who now have the added complications around accommodation, but we wanted to ensure that as many members could attend as possible.”