Yorkshire started a new chapter today at the newly named Headingley Carnegie Stadium, where Yorkshire and Leeds Cricket Football and Athletic Club revealed plans that will make both the rugby and cricket stadia among the best in world sport.

Yorkshire's England captain Michael Vaughan, present at Headingley for the unveiling of the new plans, said he was delighted with the new-look Headingley.

"It is great news for Yorkshire to own their own ground for the first time in their history," enthused Vaughan.

"International cricket goes back many years at Headingley and we have seen some fantastic occasions. Even to consider not continuing with Test cricket would have been a disaster and the development of the ground has made it into a great venue.

"The England players enjoy playing here and they will be delighted that Test and one-day internationals are to continue."

Leeds CFAC chief executive Gary Hetherington said it was a very significant development for both cricket and rugby that a new partnership agreement had been signed with Leeds Metropolitan University and that the complex would now be called the Headingley Carnegie Stadium.

It was a ten-year deal with the option of a further five years and it had been a major factor in cementing the purchase of the freehold of the cricket ground by Yorkshire from Leeds CFAC.

Former athletics star Brendan Foster, Chancellor of Leeds Met University, said the deal was a fantastic example of a sporting partnership taking place off the field.

The ambition had been to relocate part of the Carnegie faculty to Headingley and the plan had flourished.

Foster said there had been a danger that Headingley would lose Test cricket.

"Thank God that people saw sense and that Yorkshire's purchase of the ground went through, so saving Test cricket for Yorkshire and the north of England," he added.

"Sporting partnerships are the future of sport and they need to push forward. Headingley is a theatre of sporting dreams but we have to move on and I would like to see it turned into a dream factory, a place where dreams can be turned into reality."

Yorkshire chairman Robin Smith said the Carnegie stand which was currently being erected on the rugby side was both a viewing area for rugby and a college for Leeds Met.

The north-south stand, which rugby and cricket share, was built in the 1930s and was now "shot through" and needed replacing.

Talks were going on with several organisations, including Sport England, and the aim was for Yorkshire and Leeds CFAC to build a new stand with a tunnel down the middle with cricket on one side and rugby on the other.

The new stand would provide Yorkshire with 3,000 additional seats, taking the capacity to 20,000 and putting it into the mainstream of big grounds.

The third and final stage of Yorkshire's development will be a new pavilion and media centre at the Kirkstall Lane end of the ground and Smith said this would be similar in design to the facilities at Melbourne Cricket Ground.

"This is the dawn of a new era and I don't know of any other sporting arrangement of three equal partners," said Smith.

"It will provide us with one of the finest sporting centres in the world."

Updated: 10:32 Thursday, January 12, 2006