Sympathy For The ECB

When our former co-editor Maxie and I established this blog long ago, Maxie wrote on our ‘about’ page that TFT was generally ‘suspicious of authority but supportive of our players’. I never imagined that ten years later, in the midst of a global pandemic, I’d write an article supporting the board and criticising our players. But here we are.

Yesterday the ECB announced a series of measures that are clearly needed to protect cricket’s future:

£40 million (available immediately) to support counties. This includes the early release of monies that several counties need to survive in normal circumstances, let alone the current one where gate receipts will be zero for the foreseeable future.

The ECB are also suspending international staging fees – the money counties pay for the right to hold international fixtures that are now unlikely to go ahead.

£21 million in interest-free loans (available soon) to support recreational cricket. There will be a 12-month holiday on loan repayments plus ‘return to cricket’ grants.

Without actually seeing the books I have no idea whether the above measures will be enough. I’m not even sure if these will turn out to be the right policies (I guess time will tell). However, at least the ECB are being proactive and actually trying to do something.

In the current circumstances, which nobody in professional sport could’ve realistically foreseen, I tend to give people making big decisions the benefit of the doubt. Nobody knows precisely what the future holds so they’re effectively making huge decisions off the cuff and in the dark. They’re unlikely to get everything right but who would?

ECB officials have also entered into the spirit of the times by volunteering to take a 20% pay cut for the initial three months in which no cricket is likely to be played.

Tom Harrison himself has volunteered a 25% pay cut. Bravo. We’ve criticised Harrison and his astronomical salary plenty of times in recent times so it’s only fair to applaud the bloke when he’s doing the right thing.

There is one fly in the ointment, however, and sadly that’s the reported position of the England players – although it must be said that Ben Stokes has denied the reports on Twitter.

Although the ECB have said they won’t impose a pay cut on centrally contracted players, they have encouraged the PCA to ask its members to consider a 20% reduction in April and May. This seems fair enough to me. If the CEO (who is presumably working his arse off under enormous pressure at the moment) can take a pay cut then players who aren’t, you know, actually playing, should be prepared to take one too.

Sadly, however, George Dobell, who has recently recovered from what he suspects was coronavirus himself – thank heavens he’s ok – has reported that England’s players have initially ‘declined’ this idea. Oh dear. Although Dobell could be wrong this would be extremely unusual. After all, when it comes to speaking truth to power, George is normally someone well worth listening to.

One hopes the players will eventually see the light on this one and change their stance. Whilst I have a lot of sympathy for lower tier county players, who might be on salaries of £25k (and they’re only employed for 7 months per year remember), the guys higher up the food chain should be able to afford a temporary pay cut quite easily.

Whereas the average county player earns a salary of £50k, an England red ball central contract is worth a whopping £700k per annum. A white ball only contract is worth around £170,000 PLUS their county salary on top.

England players also get performance related bonuses, lucrative endorsements, plus whatever they earn in T20 leagues around the world. A good IPL contract, of course, is about the same as the GDP of a small country.

At a time when people across the land are struggling financially, and the government are bailing out companies and individuals to the tune of £billions, I’d be incredulous if our top cricketers aren’t happily taking a financial hit too. It would seem incredibly selfish. Therefore one would expect them to reverse this reported stance quick smart. After all, this current crop of England cricketers are reportedly a much nicer bunch than some of their predecessors.

Perhaps it’s harsh to tar everyone with the same brush though. Although I’d very much like to see guys see sense over this one, some cricketers have been actively trying to help in the current crisis. Here’s a fantastic example below. Well done Jos. Now make sure your teammates are on the same page please.

 


James Morgan

41 comments

  • I suspect that the England players will soon realize that refusing to accept a pay cut in these circumstances is not a good notion – if the tune has not changed before what would be close of play today were there any cricket happening I will be surprised.

    • Well, with a 10% pay cut for an England player they could fully pay for a member of most other nations’ national teams.

      Really not sure how say the Sri Lanka or South Africa are going to pay the players. They are practically broke as it is, and with no cricket being played, it is not like those boards will find money where there is none.

  • On the narrow issue of England players’ pay, this appears something of a cock-up. Dobell’s article had an original headline (since changed) that was stronger than the article itself warranted. The implication was that England’s players were personally asked to take a pay cut and refused – but from the evidence available now it seems the discussions were between the ECB and PCA and didn’t involve the players themselves. The PCA are copping some flak for not communicating with the players. I don’t have much affection for the PCA but I’d surmise that they felt England player pay cuts would be the thin end of a longer wedge to force through pay cuts among country cricketers.

    As for wider issues, I find it impossible to make an informed comment on the ECB’s package at this stage. I want to know more about where the ECB got the money from – is any of it borrowed and if so, from who and on what terms? The ECB had reserves of £11m and has found £61m – from where exactly? I want to know more about the money the ECB is loaning. If it can’t be repaid, who ultimately holds the liability? Giving loans that can’t be repaid and using that to seize assets has been one of the prime vulture capitalist tactics of recent years (see John Perkins’ ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit-man’). As for Harrison’s pay cut, his salary is so ridiculously bloated he can take an apparently sizeable cut and still be on a huge amount (he’ll still be on around £600,000 from what I’ve read). I’ll pass on the pats on the back, thanks.

    • The headline has been softened but the substance of the article remains pretty much the same.

  • ”…this current crop of England cricketers are reportedly a much nicer bunch than some of their predecessors.”

    What’s the basis for this claim? This lot aren’t shy of a bit sledging, and I don’t recall any members of the 2005 test side, for example, being caught on film fracturing someone’s skull at 0200 in the morning while shitfaced, or mocking disabled children.

    The fact they’ve declined to take a pay cut despite not actually doing their job at present suggests that perhaps they’re not all that angelic after all (Jos excepted – he’s clearly a class act).

    • All the journalists say this crop are nicer. More approachable and less arrogant.

      • Journalists are now “strategic partners” so what they say can’t be believed.

      • Tbf, the lad has a point.. the 2005 lot weren’t thugs and this team isn’t shy of verbal sledging (buttler/stokes etc)…

        Sadly no one can believe the media because they HAVE to say the right things or he’ll lose access.. they’ll lose the briefings behind the back on tours etc etc

        The only few things this lot have over 2005 is far less averages.. far worse team.. far worse willingness to adapt and fight and more money and entitlement than ever

  • Good for people taking the pay cuts.

    I suspect the players will do the same.

    I’m not going to bitch about Harrison’s salary – taking £600,000 off his salary is a pretty good thing.

    • Harrison has not taken £600,000 off his salary – unless you can reference a source proving that he has.

      From what I’ve managed to find, Harrison has taken a reduction to £600,000, a cut of about £100,000. Essentially he’s given up the massive pay rise he awarded himself in 2019.

    • Yes Simon, the maths around Harrison’s pay cut is a little bit murky to say the least. We’re told by Harrison it’s 25% (of £720,000) but the text of Dobell’s article says that it’s around £100,000–or a little under 14%.

      So which is it?

  • I share Simon H’s view on this. I too thought the ECB financially, even before the current crisis had little left in the pot, mainly because they’ve committed most to the 100. Yes so where does £61m. suddenly spring from? Surely Tom Harrison doesn’t earn that much! I’m no financial expert, but it seems to me the ECB are more likely to go broke before some counties. They get little praise from me. As for the England players – well they could take a 50% pay cut on their salaries, they aren’t exactly doing anything are they.

    • It’s not the fact that the are not doing anything. You don’t know what existing financial commitments people have. Mortgages etc. Unless people want to go back to the good old days of pay as you play… Every person is a separate case and so it is not for us to judge.

  • Generally speaking the ‘it depends on the circumstances’ argument is usually a cop out. A pretend wisdom which appears on the surface reasonable but in practicality is an excuse to do a little as possible.
    Professsional sportsmen, who are doing one of the most privelidged jobs out there, need to send the right message at a time when they are not doing their job. I know it’s not their fault but they are still taking wages under false pretences, so taking a percentage cut should be a no brainer. Very few of the general public off work are still on full whack, so what makes sportsmen special?
    As to the ECB package, it’s a welcome initiative, hopefully to be used in constructive priorities where those in most immediate need are identified as those priorities. Executive’s pay cuts would mean more if they were more than a gesture. A 50% cut should be a minimum, hardly hardship for them.

  • I have no faith In the ECB. Pay back
    Loans to Counties already in debt? After the way they’ve been sidelined and bullied? Everything sacrificed for the Hundred and then the gamble on one format? Don’t bet on fate. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!!

  • The higher the salary, the easier it is to manage after a pay cut.
    25% off Tom Harrison’s £720k is rather different to 25% off Fred Trundler’s £25k.

  • A charitable article James, but reading it made me realise that after what they’ve done during their tenure, I am physically incapable of feeling sympathy for Graves and Harrison !

  • I may be suspicious, but this smells to me a bit like the spat between the Australian players and their board of a couple of years ago. In that case the board tried to misrepresent the issue as the test players being selfish until it emerged that they were actually arguing about the terms for their state and female colleagues. In that case the ACB hierarchy ended up being defenestrated. If this case is similar I trust Harrison will be out the door. But as others have said, we need the full facts from all sides and then we can judge.

  • Nick Hoult confirms the CC is going to be scrapped. The last non-war year there wasn’t a CC was 1890. Don’t assume it will return in 2021 in identical form.

    • When I checked this (I read it the same way as you originally), I found that there was a Championship in 1890–that was the first year it was an official competition. But there was an unofficial competition for several decades before that, so it would probably be the first time in getting on for 200 years that there won’t have been a Championship in peacetime.

      If Hoult’s sources are correct, then that’s very poor indeed in my view. I can understand prioritising the Blast and (he says through clenched teeth) the Hundred, but why not carry over promotion and relegation from 2019 to 2021 and play a one-off, three-geographical-conference Championship, producing three regional winners, alongside the Hundred? That would only take five rounds if everyone played everyone else once.

      That means it would be eminently possible as long as the season could start by mid-July. I can only see a reason to cancel it completely if it’s impossible to get five rounds in–which we’re a long way off knowing at this stage.

  • Rob Andrew reckons counties should be planning for no cricket at all this year. I wouldn’t think there’s any country CEO with more contacts in elite circles to know what they have in store.

  • The DM claim they’ve seen five alternative calendars the ECB have drawn up depending on different times when cricket can resume.

    A mid-July start has a schedule of 8-9 CC games. A slightly later start has 3 regional conferences of six (which would cut travel times and would be one way of seeing Hampshire play Sussex again!). Only one alternative has no CC at all.

    PR to appease the counties and pave the way for pay cuts – or genuine possibilities? Time will tell.

    • Hoult meanwhile has a slghtly longer-term view in which he’s very pessimistic for the Championship surviving in its current form for very long: “The Hundred has gobbled up money but the ECB sold a broadcast deal based on its existence. No, the cuts will fall elsewhere [not on grassroots and women’s cricket development and on outreach aimed at tapping into the South Asian market], and many may not like the outcome”.

      Harrison yesterday had this to say: “We are a sport with a very high cost base and that is something we have to address coming out of it. All these lessons have to be learned so we can better prepare ourselves for whatever is coming, whether it is climate change or whether it is something like this that happens again in the future. We will learn massive lessons from this and one of them might be how do we have a more sustainable cost base across cricket?”

      …which makes me want to reach for the sick bucket! This comes from the man who’s overseen the biggest money drain in the history of the ECB by essentially creating a £100m vanity competition, and who’s overseen a huge increase in administrative staff, including some–notably himself–on obscenely high salaries. So the lesson to me is that Harrison’s (and others’) salaries should be trimmed by several hundred thousand a year and the growing ECB bureaucracy pared down.

      Of course it would also mean addressing the issue of player salaries, which have got completely out of hand in relation to the game’s income. Now that really would be an outcome a lot within the game wouldn’t like!

  • On Harrison’s salary, the DM reports he’s taken a 25% cut on his annual £719,000. However the duration of that cut remains opaque. If it is three months like for the England players, I calculate he’ll lose about £40,000 and still be on about £670,000. If it is for the entire year, his salary would be about £540,000. The former seems more likely.

    On where the ECB has found this money, I don’t think the money for the counties is new. It looks to me that money that would have been paid anyway has been brought foward and had some strings on what it can be spent on removed. These are welcome and sensible moves but it isn’t new money. That would still leave the question of where some of the £21m for recreational cricket has come from. ECB reserves don’t cover it.

    Again, I’m quite happy to be corrected on any of this. There isn’t much I can find in the public domain to go on and I’m not claiming any expertise on corporate accounting. My apologies if I’m misunderstanding something here which is entirely possible.

    • I hope there will be a proper evaluation process for club access to the £21m. I am all in favour of using the money to support clubs with limited resources but are (and have been) properly run with reasonable financial discipline. My concern is clubs that have lived beyond their means and are looking for a bailout. I can think of a club in Surrey that recruited 2 FC players from Pakistan (they had not checked that league rules only allowed them to field one in the 1st team and the other one played 2nds). They shot up divisions and, when the money disappeared, they shot down equally quickly. As a member of a properly run club, with 2-3 years reserves in the current situation, I do not want money wasted on clubs that will be in financial trouble again in another couple of years.

      • You know exactly how it’ll go… those bigger clubs with ‘Clubmark’ who sadly are the ones in one way or another are paying players, coaches etc .. doesn’t matter how you dress it up.. these clubs are the problem not the so,union but sadly anyone playing for them seems blind and thinks they are in some great club.

        It will all go to them and they’ll keep paying players , coaches and overseas to carry them

  • I think we now know what was behind the original story. The players were holding out for a say in what happened to the money raised by their salary cut (a reasonable position satisfied by the charity agreement) and the ECB chose to misrepresent this by briefing journalists that the players were resisting a cut. Harrison needs to be forced out. Either he briefed the journalists incorrectly or he failed in his management duty to correct the story.

  • Vic Marks makes a good point about who are the counties most likely to off-load if they can’t afford to maintain the size of staffs of the past?

    The red-ball specialist…

      • This is why it is so important to defenestrate Harrison for his role in misrepresenting the position of England’s players.

    • That was probably coming even without Corinavirus…whcih will make it a lot worse. I read somewhere, maybe even during the 2018 season, that 80% of Northants’ training was geared to white-ball cricket.

      Which is why they’ve retained players like Graeme White (32-year-old retired from red-ball cricket) and Richard Levi (Kolpaker who hardly ever plays red-ball), both of whom must be on fairly large salaries, rather than free up the money for some younger players who might help them survive in Div 1 in the Championship.

      Being a non-T20 player will be OK if you have a solid reputation to rely on (Alastair Cook, say), but I’d be fearing for the likes of Luke Wells or even Ben Coad or Sam Robson in the long-term. I’d even wonder about someone like Amar Virdi, who has a pretty good f-c record. Whereas young players like Matt Carter, Mason Crane or Pat Brown, who are rarely selected for f-c cricket, will be fine.

  • One plus if England play Tests and white-ball at the same time and pick different teams is that it would presumably get Buttler out of the Test team. Where Stokes and Archer ended up would be interesting.

    Test: Burns, Sibley, Crawley, Root, Stokes, Foakes, S Curran, Wood, Bess, Broad, Anderson.

    ODI: Roy, Bairstow, Denly, Morgan, Ali, Buttler, Woakes, T Curran, Rashid, Archer, Saqib.

    A particularly dry summer and they might switch Ali across for Wood.

    • 6 bowlers and no Pope? Big mistake. You only need one all-rounder (Stokes).

    • How many times is it necessary to point out that Woakes is a proper test seamer whilst Curran is a military medium dobbler?

  • No Pope in either side?! Surely he gets in the test side in front of Sam Curran–as the saying goes, if you can’t win it with four seamers, you won’t win it with five.

    Denly in the ODI side in that scenario in front of both Hales and Malan really isn’t a good move from a cricketing point of view…but I suspect that you’ve nailed Morgan’s antipathy towards both of them there! Even so, Banton’s probably a better bet for ODIs given that Denly will be 37 by the time of the next WC.

  • Reporting over the last couple of days in the DM points to the 16.66 being postponed this year. Sky reportedly don’t want the new tournament launched with empty stands and no overseas’ players (likely to be hit by restrictions on international travel even if they don’t have other playing commitments).

    They’re also not withholding full payment to the ECB which is interesting. Are they so joined at the hip there’s no point – or are they sufficiently worried the ECB might go elsewhere in the future if they do the dirty on them now? I think we can rule out decency or fairness having much to do with it.

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