Dear Mr Price,
I write on behalf of The Full Toss, a blog for followers of English cricket and supporters of the England national sides (of whom your brand is official sponsor).
We would like to draw your attention to the parlous state of relations between the England and Wales Cricket Board and the English cricketing public.
Among supporters, there is a widespread feeling of disillusionment, disenfranchisement, frustration, and anger.
A great many feel that for some years – but particularly since February 2014 – the board has treated us with a remarkably arrogant degree of contempt and disdain.
We assert that the ECB, and specifically chairman Giles Clarke, regard the public merely as an indentured cash-cow, whose sole role is obediently to buy tickets and TV subscriptions, with no right of reply.
They haven’t the slightest interest in listening to what we have to say, answering our questions, or taking our views into consideration.
This is a very great pity, because without fans there is no cricket. We pay the bills. We absorb the sponsors’ messages. We provide the meaning and context. But we are taken for granted.
As a blog, we certainly don’t claim to represent every England follower. But I would encourage you to read the hundreds of reader comments on our posts during the last couple of weeks (which you can access via our home page), and even beyond.
You might also like to read the comments on another blog, How Did We Lose In Adelaide, many of whose readers often share our concerns.
To shed further light on the public mood, you could digest the discussion boards ‘below the line’ on the Guardian and Telegraph cricket pages; replies to the ECB Twitter handle (@ecb_cricket); and even comments on the ECB’s own Facebook page.
I for one have never known a climate like this in thirty years watching cricket. We have run this blog since 2009, but only in the last few months have people told us – in significant numbers – that they now find it impossible to support the England team. Some even want England to lose, such is their sense of hurt and alienation.
And it may not be a coincidence that the 2014 summer saw some of the poorest test attendances in recent memory. Only 4,784 spectators, for example, watched the fourth day of the Ageas Bowl test against India.
Why are people upset? Here are some common remonstrances.
- The ECB have still not satisfactorily explained why they sacked Kevin Pietersen, the highest run-scorer in English history, despite the confidentiality agreement expiring as long ago as 1st October.
- The existing statements on this matter by England managing director Paul Downton are directly contradicted by other evidence in the public domain, suggesting that he has misled the public, perhaps deliberately.
- The Pietersen affair, and his book, have raised a large number of disturbing questions about the conduct of the ECB. These include allegations of bullying, mismanagement of illness and injury, inequal treatment of employees, and breaches of confidence. In response, the ECB have yet made no statement, or made any representative available for interview.
- These matters also cast doubt on the Board’s basic management competence and their ability to run a successful international sports team. They conducted no review into the catastrophic 5-0 Ashes series defeat last winter.
- Instead of speaking openly to their supporter base, the ECB prefer to communicate by means of unattributed leaks, often in the form of gossip and innuendo disseminated via journalists.
- The ECB regard the general public as “outside cricket”, the insulting term used in their press release of 9th February this year. Their use of this phrase – intended to decry supporters’ criticism of their conduct – was met with widespread outrage, but they have never apologised or attempted to clarify their meaning.
- The ECB are pricing people out of cricket and remodelling the sport as a pastime exclusively for the rich. Ticket prices for international fixtures continue to escalate beyond affordable levels for families on modest incomes. Seats for the 2015 Ashes are typically priced from £60 to £90.
- There has been no domestic or international English cricket on live free-to-air television since September 2005. Only those able to afford Sky Sports subscriptions can watch cricket. We are raising generations of children who have never seen an England match. Consequently, cricket’s future demographic is fast being eroded, to our peril. The ECB have fiercely, and successfully, resisted efforts to re-list marquee fixtures for terrestrial broadcast.
- Concerns persist over the ‘Big Three’ re-structuring of the ICC, which was vigorously advocated by the ECB despite fears for the future integrity and health of the global game.
So how, you may ask, is any of this the business of Waitrose?
We bear your company no malice and we recognise the value to English cricket of sponsorship revenue, in your case a reported £3 million a year.
But you have something we don’t. You have Giles Clarke’s ear.
He has no interest in supporters and will never pay the slightest attention to anything we say. A couple of months ago The Full Toss approached him for an interview and were told the ECB will only engage with the public through their own channels – the Facebook page and Twelfth Man club.
Sponsors are a different matter, though. Clarke and his board will do anything to keep their paymasters happy. For Waitrose, they will despatch the coach and captain to a cookery lesson, or send Stuart Broad, James Anderson and Katherine Brunt around your shopping aisles for an advert.
If you tell Clarke that something’s wrong with English cricket, he will listen. If you tell him that the cricketing public is dismayed, affronted, and disaffected, he might just do something about it.
We entreat you to have this conversation with him. We will be eternally grateful.
Please tell him what we have to say. Please explain why we are angry. Please ask him to listen to us.
You are our only hope.
Yours sincerely,
Maxie Allen, on behalf of The Full Toss
*******
Update: the letter has now been sent to Mark Price’s office, including a link to this post. Many thanks for all your contributions so far. If you’ve yet to add your thoughts, but agree with the above sentiments and would like to pass on your own message to Waitrose, please add your comments below.
Not bad Maxie, but you forgot to mention Waitrose’s horrible Sunday trading hours. They should assess that too.
The only problem with commenting on this letter is finding an opinion I posses on the current fan/ECB relationship that the above has not covered. Since turning 16 a while back, I and my friends have discounted the attendance of any international matches as an affordable pastime. I find that, as a relatively young cricket fan, immensely sad.
Likewise my love of cricket was first invoked when I witnessed a match on television, and the lack of free-to-air cricket for the new generation is a wasted opportunity to breed a necessary fanbase.
I hope Waitrose, for the sake of the fans respond and take to heart the words of this message. We trust in you, because we must.
Maxie,
I agree completely with the above sentiments; and very well put they are too.
I am still particularly disgusted by the “outside cricket” comment & the apparent lack of meritocracy when it comes to selecting and managing the England cricket team.
Chris
That “outsiders” gaff really was the last straw for me. My disgust of the ECB and its cronies is a bottomless pit of rage.
Additionally, the ECB is widely viewed amongst a vast number of England supporters that it is probably the most incompetent and disfunctional administrative board of any mainstream sport in the Northern hemisphere, which reflects the disenfranchisement of the cricketing public towards England cricket.
Would your association with such an ignoble body really reflect well on your company ethics, ethos, and brand promotion?
Yours Sincerely
D.Milligan
Very good.
Well written, said and done Maxie. Says it all in my view.
Have you seen latest stones being thrown at KP by Steve James in DT? Yet another journo who couldn’t see the wood for the trees not even if he hit his head on 100 oaks! It is alleged by one commenter that Mr James is close friend of Mr Flower. Say no more squire. I am so sick to death of these miscreants. Unblieveable hypocrisy.
Steve James has been very open about his relationship with Flower – he even wrote a book about it!
Agreed. As a frequent Waitrose shopper (several times a week), I am really, REALLY put off by their implied support of the ECB, Moores and Cook.
And I mean: ***REALLY*** put off.
I have been a passionate supporter of England and English cricket for 33 years and have never felt more alienated and ignored by those running the game and many of those reporting on it.
The biggest problem with cricket is that not enough of them have ever paid to go through the gates. The arrogance and distain to all of us “outside the game” paying to watch, paying to subscribe and paying to play genuinely disgusts me.
Waitrose is part of the John Lewis Partnership, an organisation whose structure empowers and rewards its workforce. According to the JLP website, the founder’s vision was of “a successful business powered by its people and its principles”. John Lewis has also always considered and invested in its customers, with its famous slogan of “never knowingly undersold” and its focus on quality and honesty.
I’m surprised that Waitrose wants to have anything to do with the current management of England cricket.
Living abroad, I can’t really claim to have much consumer power over Waitrose, but I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments expressed by Zephirine.
Being seen cosying up to an establishment that so publicly acts in ways counter to Waitrose’s perceived best qualities (service, quality and listening to stakeholders) can only damage Waitrose’s brand image in the long term.
Waitrose is that rare thing — a responsible retailer that treats its employees and customers alike with respect, as evidenced by its winning the 2014 Conlumino, Nation’s Favourite Food Retailer, the Which? Best Supermarket award in both 2011 and 2013, and the government’s 2012 Big Society award. As a recent convert to its stores, I can testify that shopping in Waitrose and any other supermarket is like the difference between day and night.
On this basis, I feel strongly that Waitrose’s reputation is harmed by its association with the England and Wales Cricket Board, which treats the public and its employees alike with barefaced contempt and has reduced our summer national sport to a niche market over which it exercises its monopoly with little thought for its long-term future. The board that exercised “due diligence” and then signed a deal with disgraced billionaire Alan Stanford after he had been turned down by other boards is not a fitting partner for a reputable business like Waitrose.
Dear Waitrose!
Your company rightly has a great reputation, and sponsoring English cricket is a truly wonderful thing.
But the people governing the ECB are unprincipled. They not only lack honesty, integrity and openness but they also treat players with disdain. As for cricket lovers…well, they are simply full of contempt for us. Never in my 66 years have I seen a ruling sports body treat players and supporters as badly as this.
Maxie Allen has presented our views extremely well. Please listen to him and either take up our concerns with Giles Clarke or simply disassociate from the ECB.
Thank you very much.
Zero
I don’t know why Waitrose is associated with the England & Wales – please note the silent Wales in the title – whose choice was that? – – Cricket Board. The ECB is scum. I will never go to another cricket match again because I will not put my hard earned into the pockets of liars and cheats, incompetent ones at that. And I will not watch SkyCricket , the lapdogs of the ECB – all unaccountable miscreants
If, as it seems that you infer, there are a large number of people who would like the current ECB Management to be replaced, and I am certainly in agreement with that point of view, then why not attempt to orchestrate a supporters strike for a few matches?
Yes it would be annoying for some followers to decide not to view their team playing the Australians in an Ashes series but if it is for the better good of English cricket then why not accept the pain?
England v Australia at Lords in front of a few thousand supporters would certainly show the ECB that they cannot take us all for granted.
Fully agree with everything written in this letter. It pains me to be watching England play knowing that only heavy losses will remove the current management. Basically hoping England lose for future good.
Waitrose – Now there is some sensible advice. Please convey it to the ECB.
Well done Sir. You have expressed the views of a great number of cricket supporters in a clear lucid and unemotional way. One would hope that the powers that be at Waitrose have sufficient nous to understand the anger and annoyance felt by a large number of supporters who may or may not be their customers. If they choose to ignore this they may well be in a situation where not only will they loose customer support but miss an opportunity to attract new business from disgruntled supporters who could well, if they take notice, move their business to them.
I for one would certainly take my business to them if they were to show that they are prepared to listen.
Not much more to add to all of the above.
Sadly, I have about as much faith in the corporate world giving a (full) toss about the general public as I do the ECB.
I’d love to be proven wrong.
Your comments are fully supported by me.
The ECB are a disaster case ruining our cricket the people
who own the game.
I have always attended at least one international cricket match every year, which is all I can afford. I will not attend any next year in protest at the way the ECB is mismanaging the game.
I have stopped buying and reading the Guardian in protest at their lack of interest in holding the ECB to account. I have deleted my Guardian account.
I shop at Waitrose two or three times a month but as of now will stop doing so until at least some of the concerns Maxie raises above are addressed.
Thanks
All of the above (more or less),
Grenville
What is hilarious is that the pro ECB media mafia continuously attack KP for being a money grasping selfish spiv.
The Telegraph is at it again today with a piece by, I think Steve James.
“the crux of Pietersen’s discontent is the lucre”
Is the England captain ever allowed to appear anywhere in public without his coach, David Brent alongside to hold his hand? This feeds into the ‘mission creep’ role of the coach in recent years. Who is actually in charge of this team? Captain or coach?
Can you imagine Mike Brearley having to attend photo opportunities with some gormless management consultant standing next to him who calls himself the coach? Makes me physically sick just looking at this rubbish.
You have to hand it to Giles Clarke. He is clever about who he gets to fund English cricket. Sky money is mostly generated by premiership football supporters, many of them have no interest in cricket. Therefore in no way hold Clarke or the ECB to account. Waitrose is an up market niche supermarket chain that is probably not even used by many supporters. (Except the wives of the board of ECB management, when they are not shopping in Harrods.) He then quickly hands over this money to the counties who in turn vote to keep him in a job.
It’s straight out of the Sepp Blatter mode of running things. Get a load of money from sponsors and corporate exclusive deals, and then hand it over to the people who vote to keep you in a job. Smile, and then extend the middle finger to the real fans. Its genius.
Unfortunately for cricket, Mark’s Sepp Blatter comparison is spot on!
The ecb has behaved so destructively and now arrogantly towards England supporters that it has been depressing for me and many of my friends. I must admit their dishonesty and addiction to the dark arts has rubbed off on the way I see waitrose now as they only seem to have sponsored England during the period when the England set-up ever so slightly makes my stomach turn
Thank you, Maxie, for expressing my views so unequivocally. I do not use Waitrose because I live in a part of Scotland which does not have a branch in easy travelling distance. I do, however, buy items online from John Lewis, and a personal boycott of this means of purchase is the next best thing. The Sky subscription is going out of the window, too. One small gesture for a cricket fan ; one giant leap for English cricket……maybe ?
Many, many thanks for all your comments so far. But please keep them coming – the more perspectives we can present, the better.
Heartily agree with much of the above. I have been a follower of England cricket for 30 years since I was a lad, been a regular at domestic international matches of all types & been on several overseas tours. However this year was the first time I have not been to a domestic England match for years & have no plans to return with the current ECB top brass still in place.
Their failure to address the complete meltdown in the last Ashes (I was there it was bad), the resulting scape-goating of their best player, re-hiring a previously failed coach & being labelled as “outside cricket” by the ECB (all despite being asked to pay the most expensive prices for cricket in the world) has left me feeling completely disconnected.
This disconnect means this no longer feels like the England cricket team it feels merely like an ECB franchise. A sad state of affairs indeed…
I fully endorse the article written by Maxie and many of the points made by my fellow commenters. I have followed English cricket since 1975 and have never known relations between the governing body and the supporters to be so bad. I have cancelled my Sky subscription and do not attend international cricket matches as a result, preferring instead to give all my support directly to the counties.
One point you may be hearing is that this article and others like it are just about Kevin Pietersen and that we are just “KP fan boys”. The treatment of Kevin Pietersen was a flagrant breech of natural justice and the basic sporting principle of meritocracy – but it is only the tip of a very large iceberg of resentment at the conduct of the ECB over the last decade.
Many of these resentments have already been mentioned. For me, the ECB moved beyond the pale when no senior executive resigned over the Stanford Affair. Are you happy to be allied with a body that has such a recent record of disastrous decision-making allied to such a refusal to accept the consequences of its actions? Their failure to grow the game is another grievous fault. For example, why are they against T20 becoming an Olympic sport when the IOC are sympathetic and rugby sevens at the Commenwealth Games showed how such exposure can attract new fans. The ECB’s approach appears to be to squeeze existing revenue streams until they run dry with repeated series of the Ashes the most egregious example (I have never known cricket fans say they are sick of the Ashes but it is a commonly expressed sentiment now). The lack of a long term sustainable vision is palpable. I would add the system for allocation test venues as another significant problem. The most northerly venue of next summer’s Ashes is Nottingham – is this how it should be for the national summer game? Manchester, Leeds and Durham have been priced out of a bidding process which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. One only has to look at Australia to see how the process should be conducted.
I have always believed Waitrose to be a company that takes its wider social responsibilities seriously. I believe that you still understand the difference between ownership and custodianship which I would suggest is a distinction the ECB no longer understands. I would urge you to raise some of the concerns mentioned at TFT and elsewhere with the ECB before some of the toxic reputation of that body starts to rub off on Waitrose.
I agree with every word.
To the ECB – Am I regarded as “outside cricket”?
Max Sawyer
Player for 50 years
Former Club Captain
Former Club Chairman
Member of ACO (qualified umpire & coach)
MCC Member
MCC Umpire
Agree 100 percent on this issue with the full toss. Please utilise your sway as a sponsor to keep the ECB on the straight and narrow. They have displayed arrogance and incompetence in their handling of the 5-0 ashes whitewash. Their conduct on the serious issues raised by England’s greatest ever run scorer needs to be reviewed to restore the supporters confidence in the game.
The ECB’s recent behaviour runs totally contrary to the ethics and ethos of the John Lewis Partnership. In my various dealings with them over the years the JLP have been polite, respectful, honest and open – everything that the ECB has not been since the issues with KP came to light.
How a company with the reputation of Waitrose can associate with the ECB dumfounds me given the ECB’s behaviour. There is no match between the values of the John Lewis Partnership and the way the ECB has conducted itself. This association can only damage the reputations of Waitrose and the John Lewis Partnership. Associating with Jonathan Agnew, the increasingly discredited BBC Cricket Correspondent will also further damage your reputations.
I have written how the ECB remains toff heavy and lacking in real understanding of how its real stakeholders – the people who pay for memberships, game tickets and Sky subscriptions – feel. The ECB just expect us to shut up, tug our forelocks and move on.
You have the ability to make Giles Clarke listen to these concerns by reviewing your association with the ECB.
Please make a positive difference for the true stakeholders of the game and for your reputations.
+1. Cheers.
[…] to say, I endorese totally the Full Toss letter to Waitrose. It probably won’t work, but when each individual who isn’t loaded is cast aside by […]
Great stuff guys. Keep the comments coming. Thanks!
As a none stake holder in English cricket (Australian) I’m not sure it’s my place to have an opinion on this.
I will however say this; That as a stakeholder in cricket generally I would be loathe to have my brand sullied by association with the current ECB.
They are cronyism writ large with no fealty to the people who make their sinecures possible; This would be the British public and by extension the international cricketing public who support the English team indirectly, by paying to watch games in which the England team participate.
The ECB has shown themselves to be totally inward looking with such a lack of self awareness that they don’t seem to recognise the damage they have done to their brand and by association their sponsors brands.
I would hope that Waitrose would accept this letter (by Maxie) in the spirit in which it is written and with an eye to helping to improve relations between England Cricket and the main stake holders, the public.
Respectfully,
Ian.
Maxie if you don’t think it’s appropriate for me to comment on this I will fully understand and please remove my comment from the thread.
Cheers,
Ian.
I completely support Maxie’s reasoned and passionate letter to Waitrose.
I spent an entire career in a financial corporate up to senior management level and have observed the changes in business’ operation over the years. In the 60s and 70s it was pretty basic going through the motions as practised for a long time. In the 80s we saw the elevation of accountants to board level and the dawn of the “Bottom Line”. In recent times, most businesses have wholeheartedly accepted that customer loyalty is extremely valuable to success and have bought into customer relationship management. The ECB is clearly still working with the 1980s model and does not share the enlightened modern approach that most businesses such as Waitrose embrace today.
I wouldn’t say that the “outside cricket” comment was “met with widespread outrage”. The papers and media said bugger all about it.
So, from the eyes of the ECB it was just people outside cricket complain about being outside cricket.
I am a volunteer junior cricket coach. We continue to have boys and girls wanting to join the club to play, which is fantastic. These kids, though, don’t have much interest in or understanding of the professional game, largely I believe because it isn’t available on free-to-view TV. Over time, most of these kids will stop playing the game, but because they haven’t grown up interested in county cricket or even international cricket, they won’t be spending £100+ on ‘a day at the cricket’. The ECB’s commercial policy of recent years is putting at risk the future market for the sport it is responsible for nurturing.
On the other matters of ECB conduct, The Full Toss and others have made points better than I can.
I grew up in the the 1960s and discovered cricket by my self. My parents had many interests but cricket was not one of them. If I had grown up today cricket would have passed me by. I would never have seen it because there is no live cricket on free to air TV.
Now in fairness to cricket the world is very different today. It’s a lot smaller, and there are many other interests and sports for people to try. But when David Collier boasted the other day that 20/20 finals day got 1.4 billion viewers, so we shouldn’t worry about the fact that the 2005 ashes got 8-9 million viewers I was gobsmacked. The domestic audience seems of no interest to them. A bit hypocritical seeing as they don’t want their English players playing full IPL series.
I fully endorse the Full Toss’s letter.
I will be avoiding shopping at Waitrose until pressure has been applied to the ECB.
One slight correction – there has been no access to *live* domestic and international fixtures on free-to-air television since 2005. Channel 5 (and channel 4 previously) have broadcast highlights programmes (admittedly only for international games if I remember correctly)
Thanks, Jason – I will make that clarification.
And thanks again to all of you for your heartfelt and enlightening comments.
Waitrose’s sponsorship of the England and Wales Cricket Board is one of the worst cases of brand misalignment I have ever seen. The core values of each business are almost diametrically opposite, and the only beneficiary is the ECB. Waitrose has invested heavily in the ECB, allowing Giles Clarke to suck both money and reputation from an enlightened business model that is famed for investing in its people, its principles and its customers. He is an unashamed brand hoover.
The ECB’s own brand is terminally tarnished through its pernicious deals with the convicted fraudster Allen Stanford and its controversial carve up of world cricket that is, even now, overseeing the destruction of the West Indies as a test-playing nation. Giles Clarke knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Not an epithet that would sit well on the cover of the John Lewis annual report.
If the John Lewis Partnership is defined by its slogan “Never knowingly undersold,” then the ECB can be judged on its player welfare values – “Never knowingly underbowled.” An attitude to player wellbeing that has seen the ECB sacrifice the health and careers of its key people. While the ECB was negotiating the sponsorship deal with enlightened employer Waitrose, it was forcing its players, through indifference, recklessness or failure of due diligence, to compete through injury or worse and to ultimate break down – Trott’s mental health, Pietersen’s knee, Swann’s elbow, Prior’s achilles. Anderson’s rib, Broad’s knee. That’s more than half the Ashes’ team that lost 5–0 over the winter. This is not just mission breakdown but the mindless destruction of people kept together through cortisone injections, vinegar and brown paper, and aftercare based on the dubious benefits of a P45. The ECB’s answer was to sack its best player of a generation without explanation, and then oversee a catastrophic public relations meltdown as it leaked and lied and innuendoed its way through eight months of a confidentiality period.
Beyond its progressive engagement with its staff, or partners, Waitrose bases its corporate model on three main tenets: quality, price and customer service. How does the ECB fare in these areas?
In terms of quality and position in the market, English cricket is closer to Budgens than to Waitrose. It is a struggling team with ICC world rankings of 3rd (tests), 5th (ODIs) and 8th (T20I). The team and its management is selected on the basis of grubby internal politics at the expense of proven merit. Its trajectory appears downward rather than setting a standard of exceptional and consistent achievement. Selection depends on down-driven conformity rather than ability to win a game. England is widely acknowledged amongst international teams and officials to be boorish and unlikable.
The ECB sold cricket rights to subscription broadcaster Sky on the back of the 2005 Ashes triumph. At the moment of England’s greatest achievement since 1981, with a golden opportunity to exploit that success to promote and elevate English cricket root and branch, the ECB sold its crown jewels to the highest bidder with the least audience reach. Ticket prices have now reached a level that would make Waitrose accountant’s blush and have led to half empty grounds around the country’s test arenas. Fewer people in the UK than ever before, including the children who should make up the next generation of cricketers, are watching live cricket.
Cricket customers are the supporters who buy tickets for international matches, pay their Sky subscriptions fees, contribute to the income stream and profits of Waitrose. Yet, the Waitrose principles of customer service are completely alien to the ECB. Giles Clarke has locked in and controlled this country’s cricket media through a toxic mix of dire threats and limited reward. He has dismissed any critic of his policies and general modus operandi as ‘outside cricket’ just as easily, so we are told, as he dismisses the mainstream press with “fuck off” when they try to corroborate a fact. The press, undaunted by the uneven relationship, is headed by close friends and former colleagues of ECB administrators, who have systematically attacked intelligent and concerned cricket supporters of being ‘fringe idiots,’ ’empty vessels,’ and ‘know nothings’ while elevating the ECB and its totems with centrally planned, often sponsored, propaganda pieces. Waitrose should have learned a lesson after the embarrassment of Jonathan Agnew, the BBC’s chief cricketing correspondent, agreeing to do the voice over for an ECB-Waitrose publicity video. This is a dangerous liaison.
While once I saw Waitose as an emporium of wonderful product and exceptional value, I can now only see the ECB’s paw prints all over the inventory and they have not come with clean hands.
I urge Waitrose to make best use of it current opportunity to influence the evolution of the ECB model according to JLP principles and help bring cricket back to its customers, formerly known as fans and participants. Quality, value and customer service. If it is good enough for Waitrose, let it also be good enough for English cricket.
Very well said Tregaskis.
“Waitrose’s sponsorship of the England and Wales Cricket Board is one of the worst cases of brand misalignment I have ever seen. The core values of each business are almost diametrically opposite, and the only beneficiary is the ECB. Waitrose has invested heavily in the ECB, allowing Giles Clarke to suck both money and reputation from an enlightened business model that is famed for investing in its people, its principles and its customers.”
Spot on, couldn’t say it any better myself. I have binned my Sky Subscription, but I’m afraid, I can’t go as far as to stop shopping at Waitrose.
I wholeheartedly support this letter. I have to admit and feel ashamed to do so, that I wanted Sri Lanka to beat us this summer. This was due to the fact that I was so upset and incensed by the ECBs treatment of the cricketing public since February 2014.
Waitrose is a business that is renowned as a paragon of corporate and social responsibility. The ECB, well to put it politely, isn’t.
The letter is a very fair and is correct that the ECB are totally arrogant. Unless they change cricket will be the loser as fans are so disenchanted. It really is time for action and a total clear out of these people ” inside cricket” We need people like Michael Vaughan ad Ian Botham running the ECB.
Yawn Yawn Yawn & still it goes on the Devout Pietersen followers are turning into the saddest minority group in sport …. Perhaps you lot can start holding periodic conventions where you can dress up in KP branded cricket gear and wear gold highlighted Mohican wigs …. Infact I have an idea to save costs you could share with other little saddo cults and join in with Star wars fans and reenact battles against the clingons or share with Cromwell troops in fighting the roundsheads ….. It really is pathetic & high time the writer sought medical help with his puzzling infatuation with Kevin Pietersen …… I cannot imagine what an empty social life he must lead …. Perhaps he writes this rubbish over a cup of tea in his allotment shed ….. Spare us
And what does James Allen spend his time doing? He manages to spare a few moments from his vibrant social life to honour one and all with his higher thoughts
I imagine him with a self satisfied little grin on his face after leaving his pearls of wisdom before he goes off in search of another sight to honour with his presence. Sadly the rest of us can only aspire to spend our lives in such a rewarding activity and will have to be content with digging our allotments!
I think you need to read James Allen’s classic book “As a Man Thinketh” as soon as possible.
https://wahiduddin.net/thinketh/as_a_man_thinketh.pdf
Hi Jonathan ;)
What a spectacular misunderstanding of the whole situation. Congratulations on your lack of reading comprehension.
The letter – and all your comments – have now been sent to Waitrose, and hopefully they’ll reach Mark Price’s office reasonably soon.
I’ll let you know as soon as there’s any word back.
Thanks again for all your comments – and keep them coming.
I’m sure Waitrose would wish to distance themselves from snobbish and discriminatory comments such as,
“He and his family are very much the sort of people we want the England captain and his family to be.”
Very damaging indeed.
This post says it all and then some. The ECB acts like a dictatorship that Robert Mugabe would be proud off. If Waitrose acted in the same way as the ECB you’d have press investigation to hold you to account and your members asking awkward questions. We have a media in the pockets of the ECB. At some stage people will boycott Waitrose if the ECB doesn’t change.
[…] this week you might have seen our open letter to Waitrose. We wrote to Mark Price, their managing director, requesting that as he uses his influence within […]
Excellently put, Maxie.
The ECB are a ship of fools – stuck in a time warp where selecting your best team matters less than selecting the ‘right kind of people’, where the cricketing public are of absolutely no concern, and where literally NO-ONE is accountable for anything that happens.
Despite terrible results, inept captaincy, rapidly shrinking crowds, baffling and unexplained selections of all kinds, there’s an awful lot of self-aggrandising arse-covering that goes on and not a lot else. With the copious labelling of every player as ‘Waitrose’ on the field, the shambolic ECB and Waitrose are rapidly becoming equated in my mind. If I were Waitrose, I’d think long and hard about whether that is the desired result of my sponsorship.
[…] other news, Waitrose have again refused to pass our letter on to their managing director. I’ve asked them for a statement to explain properly. […]
[…] might have already seen the letter we sent to Waitrose last week. If not, here’s a reminder of what we’re trying to […]