Yorkshire are set to announce that their Australian-born director of coaching, Wayne Clark, will not be at Headingley next season.

Clark, who guided Yorkshire to the Championship in 2001 and was in charge last summer when they lifted the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy, still has a year of his three-year contract to run.

But Yorkshire have been negotiating with Clark for some weeks and I understand a decision to release him will be taken at a meeting of the management board on Thursday, when all the loose ends will be tied up.

In an extensive re-structuring of the coaching system, former Yorkshire batsman Kevin Sharp is expected to be appointed batting coach, with second team coach Arnie Sidebottom being responsible for the bowling.

New Director of Cricket, Geoff Cope, will be directly in charge of operations and he will spend a lot of time at Yorkshire matches this summer as they focus their energies on trying to gain immediate promotion back to division one.

Both Cope and club president Robin Smith have been in Australia at different times during the Ashes series and each has met up with Clark. It appears Yorkshire wanted to change his role and offered to make him bowling coach but Clark declined.

It is expected that at some stage shortly Yorkshire will issue a statement setting out the viewpoint of both parties.

Smith said yesterday: "All I can say is that certain discussions have taken place in Perth with Wayne Clark and that the outcome has not yet been concluded.

"I am hoping to be in contact with Clark's solicitors very shortly, when I would expect the matter to be finalised."

The probable outcome is that there will be a mutual parting of the ways with Yorkshire paying up Clark.

Although Clark worked wonders with Yorkshire's morale in 2001 when they claimed the Championship crown for the first time in 33 years, there was a lot of general dissatisfaction with the way the team performed and their attitude last year, despite winning the C&G Trophy.

Yorkshire's decision to go along with Clark's wish to take the captaincy off David Byas led to Byas quitting and moving to Lancashire, and the Tykes never looked as disciplined or as motivated without their former leader.

But Clark was not helped by Yorkshire's off-the-field crisis, which led to new equipment and clothing not being ready for the start of the season and saw the club heading for bankruptcy before the four-man management team took over control from the general committee.

Sharp, 43, has been director of coaching at the ECB-backed Bradford-Leeds Universities Centre of Excellence since it was started up two years ago.

Although Sharp never quite scaled the heights expected of him as a youngster, when he once hit a brilliant double century for Young England, he still played in 195 first-class matches for Yorkshire between 1976-90, scoring 8,426 runs.

Sidebottom has been with Yorkshire either as a player or coach virtually since he made his debut in 1973.

Also at Thursday's meeting, Yorkshire will receive a full report from Cope on the circumstances surrounding Darren Lehmann's five-match ban from one-day internationals by the ICC for making racist remarks.