No 83, Apr 13 - The Grumbler's County Cricket Newsletter

🔴 Champ Week 2 previews 🟢 Surprise, surprise, you-know-what has lost £60m 🟣 Richard Gould's in-tray interviews 🔵 Bean means business 🟠 Gnome becomes Essex president 🟤 Telegraph want your views

Apr 13, 2023

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Last Thursday at around 11.01am, I was a happy man.

Under slate grey skies at Lord's, Tim Murtagh scuttled in from the Nursery End with that leaning, insistent approach that has served him so well over the last two decades. The ball fizzed well wide of the off stump. Nick Browne left it.

Dot ball. Season underway. Marvellous.

It cleared up in the afternoon at Lord’s

As usual, I went the day before the real story as, on Friday, Jamie Porter took wickets with the first and third balls of the Middlesex innings. The home side never truly recovered from being 4-4, it had been almost 50 years since Nos 1, 2, 3 and 4 had all been dismissed for ducks in the County Championship.

Elsewhere, Leicestershire won at Headingley for the first time since 1910 thanks to a maiden ton from Rishi Patel and a late flurry from veteran Chris Wright. It is only one game but Hampshire already look like they might just lift the title for the first time in half a century. At the other end, Sussex won their opening game under new coach Paul Farbrace. Given that they have tasted victory in only one Championship game in each of the last three seasons, this represents a flying start.

While Essex dominate my thoughts, I genuinely enjoy the success stories of others on the county scene. I am happy when the likes of Leicestershire, Northants and Derbyshire turn over one of the big teams. Likewise, I cheer all those veterans and county ‘sweats’ turning back the years. Hell, I even had no problem with moneybags $urrey taking the title last season. They were the best team, set standards off the pitch and, in the past few years, have tried to look after the game when they could have just looked after themselves.

Perhaps it is just the absence of money, attention, aggression and all the other assorted nonsense but, unlike football, I do not see county cricket supporting as a zero-sum game. Of course, it is competitive but you don't always have to lose for me to win.

I'll always support Essex but I want success for the game as well.

Then again, when the oppo are 4-4, it helps.

NB: Tweets no longer embed in Substack posts because of some nonsense from Elon Musk. I’ll work around it but, until then, the newsletter might be less visual.

Week 2 previews

There’s a different preview in every link.

Warwickshire vs Kent

Surrey vs Hampshire

Nottinghamshire vs Somerset

Essex vs Lancashire

Northamptonshire vs Middlesex

Gloucestershire vs Yorkshire

Durham vs Worcestershire

Leicestershire vs Derbyshire

County Championship - Week 1 review and stories

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County Championship team of the week: Ben Compton and Marcus Harris lead the way (Cricketer)

Deep Extra Cover - Week 1 round-up (Deep Extra Cover)

Soul of Sport: The County Championship returns as the English cricket season gets underway (Mail)

McKerr returns for two-match loan (Kent Cricket)

Harrogate's Finlay Bean scores first century of county cricket season (The Stray Ferret)

Finlay Bean is the bargain batsman Yorkshire are banking on to cover the absence of their superstars (Mail)

Mark Butcher: County Championship Bonus Point System Has Always Been Nonsense (Wisden)

A County Championship To Rival The IPL? (The Full Toss)

English County Cricket becomes Aussie Ashes battleground as Cameron Bancroft fights for selection (The West Australian)

Sean Abbott: The fast bowler hoping to force his way into Australia's Ashes team with superb summer for Surrey (Independent)

Joey Evison on his new season with Kent (Stamford Mercury)

Couldn’t Commit Due To County Obligations- Azhar Mahmood Clears Air About Him Refusing Pakistan Head Coach Role (SportsWiki)

Young people may not understand them, but cricket must celebrate its 18 counties (Telegraph) ($)

Keith Fletcher announced as the new Essex President (Essex Cricket)

News, Views and Interviews

The Hundred could have already lost the ECB up to £60million (Cricketer) ($)

The Hundred makes UK£9m loss in first two seasons (SportsPro)

County cricket proposals 'dead in the water', says ECB chief executive Richard Gould (BBC Sport)

Richard Gould - Azeem Rafiq's 'vindication' makes English cricket's racism reckoning worthwhile (Cricinfo)

England cricket chief Richard Gould promises bigger pay packets for players (Mail)

England players could sign multi-year central contracts after ECB gives go-ahead (Independent)

ECB to overhaul central contracts system in response to growing influence of T20 franchise circuit (Cricinfo)

Ignoring the Strauss review was a mistake that will be felt this county season (Telegraph)

Richard Gould has finally got his feet under his desk as ECB CEO and last week spoke to the media about a very full and very difficult in-tray.

He was asked about the Yorkshire racism affair, pay for players and the threat of franchise cricket. But clearly, everyone is listening to his every word with regard to the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named as he was among the vociferous of opponents during his time at Surrey.

It is often said you-know-what is "going nowhere". My concern has always been that it will take the rest of English cricket with it.

But for that hurried, unilateral television deal arranged by Teflon Tom Harrison before he was bundled out the door, there would be serious questions about its future after a “bombshell report” revealed its true losses this week. But like the other Richard, Gould can't go in feet first. Your main broadcaster and source of income would not appreciate that. So, he trod carefully through this verbal minefield. Praising the success of the women's version while also suggesting that the exclusivity of its August window would be looked at. The latter suggests the event’s featherbedding may soon be over. Its television audience dropped in year two and the revelations this week will only add further doubt over the attendance figures, which were already accused of being artificially inflated.

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I dislike the modern trend of sports executives saying “I said that then because it was the view of the organisation I represented”. It implies you have swapped sincerity for a salary and, more importantly, why should we believe you now?

But, for me, this was the key quote from Gould: "Everything is done by consensus. No element of the domestic game can be changed without the approval of a significant majority. Once that's happened we get on with it."

The lack of consensus, transparency, communication and, let's be honest, ethical behaviour has been at the heart of my problem with the ECB for years.

This is why no-one is surprised that a report into the finances of the English game conducted by Fanos Hira, a chartered accountant who is also chairman of Worcestershire, found that it may have lost almost £60m in the first two years. Which, these days, is known as "doing a Dido Harding".

OK, so £48m of that is the already established payment to counties and the MCC which should always have been accounted for in the calculations. But, funnily enough, was not.
However, Hira’s investigation found an extra £9m loss. And there was more cross-charging that was so opaque it was omitted.
Remember that the ECB said you-know-what made £11.8m
And the Deloitte report in the build-up to the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named predicted it would make £27m. (Remember, the ECB had put non-disclosure agreements on counties when they wanted a second opinion on Deloitte’s valuations on broadcast rights comparing the new event to a county-based T20.)
And, on top of all that, the report stated that only 45 per cent of ECB revenues were actually allocated clearly.

There is both cockup and conspiracy in all this.

But, as when many of our MPs explained away the expenses scandal with "financial errors" that only ever seem to go one-way, it cannot be dismissed as “creative accounting” or any other such euphemism. This feels like a deliberate deceit undercovered by one of their own. The implication behind this story is the money was 'hidden' to support this event in its early years and thus prove that the powers that be were right. If this is so, then the people responsible should lose their jobs.

But they rarely do, do they? And, even when they leave, they bounce back quickly.

Teflon Tom left with a bonus in his back pocket and rapidly found a new job. Recently, Graves has been looking to land the Yorkshire chair. I suspect some who knew where the money was buried are still around. Even if you disregard you-know-what, there have been all sorts of governance issues on their watch, including allowing the Yorkshire racism scandal to fester.

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But t’was ever thus. ECB chair Giles Clarke allowed Allen Stanford to land his helicopter at Lord's in the summer of 2008 in what turned out to be the most embarrassing photo in the history of English cricket. A year later the American was arrested for running a giant Ponzi scheme but, by then, Clarke had been re-elected as ECB chair. He served until 2012 and was then given a CBE for services to cricket.

Even if you argue that one calamity should not cloud an entire tenure, one of the problems we face now is that English cricket has been allowed to drift for decades. But no-one ever seems to be to blame.

The latest revelations just ramp up the feelings of resentment around the game. Even though Thompson and Gould are very different leaders, the damage has been done. The cover-up so often feels worse than the crime.

Click here, at least the Telegraph want YOUR views

So, in that atmosphere, when a governing body orders a review into the domestic schedule and does NOT include the two-year-old format that sardined an already squeezed calendar, you should expect to be dismissed. Especially, as it turned out, they have been fibbing about its costs all along.

If, as this article says, Andrew Strauss is depressed at the rejection of his report, in my opinion, that is the wake-up call he needs. Someone somewhere in cricket saying 'no' to him. Not, I hasten to add, because they do not want change but because they dare to not want HIS change. Because we have never been given any other option. The likes of Clarke, Harrison, Graves and Strauss et al have been in control of the game for so many years and, for most of that time, English cricket has been a mess. So why are these people the only ones who can fix it? Why are their ideas of change the only ones we should consider? How can we influence the process? And why should they still be in power if they are not being open and honest with us?

The powers-that-be need to be told and re-told they do not own the game of cricket, everyone does. This is not their money their spending, it's ours. Their role is not that of dictator but custodian.

And that involves the one word that stood out in Gould's quotes - consensus.

I’d welcome a frank, open discussion on the future of the game. How we can somehow fight off the total domination and decimation threatened by franchise cricket, build a younger fanbase in the game, create relevance and revenue, and develop players, all while retaining a sense of meaning, identity, history and tradition.

Of course, no-one asks the likes of me. But should I ever get the call, there is one thing I would not do.

Lie.

Even if it damaged what I considered to be my own interests.

Because the sport of cricket must be better than that. And this starts with the people charged with looking after it.

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