The Tom Harrison interview revisited

Last month, Tom Harrison – the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board – gave his first full media interviews – to Sky Sports and Test Match Special – since taking up his post in January.

It is to be regretted that in a climate of continuing political turmoil in English cricket its most powerful executive remained in the shadows for seven whole months. Did he wait quite so long to introduce himself to Sky, Waitrose or Investec?

The public are by far the most important (to use the ECB’s awful word) stakeholder in the game. We are all affected by what the board does.Many of us take a close interest in their operations and policies. But as far as Harrison’s time and energy were concerned, we ranked a long way down his list of priorities.

If you are a sceptic, like me, Harrison had some talking to do, and many questions to answer, from FTA television coverage, to grass-roots investment, the Big Three, the enfranchisement of supporters, and the skulduggery of 2014. If you’re sympathetic to the ECB, you might instead say he had plenty of successes to highlight. Either way, he should have fronted up earlier.

Harrison’s interview with Sky was derisory and pathetic. David Gower, the host, lacked either the wit or nerve to ask him about any area of controversy. It amounted to little more than a corporate video for the ECB.

But the piece with Jonathan Agnew on TMS covered far more ground and alighted on most of the important subjects. Agnew, to his credit, did not shy away from points of contention – although there were many follow-up questions I would have liked to have heard asked.

The day after it was broadcast, James ran the rule over the interview here on TFT (and thanks for all your responses on the comments board). But such is the political significance of its content that I’d like to return to it now, in greater depth.

We have had the entire interview transcribed, as a useful record for the future, and the full text appears below. First, though, let’s fisk the key points.

The team, the ECB, and the public

TH: Since [the team] came back from the West Indies…it just seems to have reconnected cricket with the English public and the players should take all the credit for that.

And later:

JA: I read a piece…this year…saying that of all things ECB really needed was to connect with people again. There seemed to be the last couple of years…a sort of dissatisfaction about English cricket and the board. [Refers to standing ovation for players at the Oval that morning] Do you think you’ve done it? Do you think you have reconnected?

TH: I think the players have done it, I think certainly when you win an Ashes series at home it’s number one on your wish list of things to do which will help you reconnect with your public. But I think they’ve gone a long way further than that – and that’s be very human and very accessible to the public, in a way that perhaps England teams of the past have not done.

And that’s been a big part of what Andrew Strauss and Trevor’s thinking is in terms of ensuring that we go out with a philosophy that is – we are England together, and everyone’s got a role to play in that. And reconnecting in the way that we saw obviously after the win that Trent Bridge. The scenes there were things that will live long in my memory because it was, it looked absolutely genuine, a genuine connection and not a sort of artificial one.

We’re also very fortunate we’ve got a team of personalities and it is important in this country that our national teams, particularly in cricket, play with personality and with passion.

The board and that sort of role  is very different in how we need to earn the trust of the English cricket following to give us the ability to make the right decisions for the game. And these are the things that we’re taking time thinking about now is how do we – how do we create a domestic structure which improves what we have and we have a lot of very, you know, a lot to build on. How do we make things better? How do we improve participation?

This exchange completely misses the point. The disconnection was between supporters and the ECB itself, not the players. People were angered by the board’s arrogance and disdain towards the public, not by England losing, or the lack of personalities or absence of passion.

I grew up in the 1980s, when the perennially-losing England became a national joke. Their misfortunes degraded my affection for them not one jot. I continued to give England my full emotional support during the fourteen years of Ashes humiliation which began 1989. Neither the results nor their style of play disconnected me. I imagine you feel the same.

In the spring of 2014 the ECB overtly began to treat us like muck – as an indentured underclass – and it was this which drove a seismic wedge between supporters and the English cricket establishment, in unique and unprecedented fashion.

As Simon H commented previously, “‘top down’ declarations of a ‘reconnection’ aren’t how reconnections work”. Yet Harrison unilaterally pronounces that all wounds are healed and everyone will now live happily ever after. On what evidence? By citing the crowd scenes at Trent Bridge after England regained the Ashes? How does that prove we now love the ECB?

By answering a completely different question from the one he was actually asked – Agnew referenced the ECB – Harrison was either being evasive, or more likely, never took the trouble to understand the problem in the first place. Was he living on the moon for the whole of 2014?

His response should have been challenged further. How many supporters has he spoken to in person? How does he think the ECB itself is perceived? Does he realise the damage ‘outside cricket’ caused? And how can he draw firm conclusions from a sample group consisting only of England fans who are content enough with the status quo to pay £85 to attend a test match? What are the feelings of those who could not or would not attend?

Towards the end of his answer, Harrison seemingly begins to fathom that the board and the team are, in the public’s eyes, not quite the same thing. So how does he think the ECB can rebuild trust? By creating a domestic structure which “improves what we have and we have a lot of very, you know, a lot to build on”. With a masterplan like that, what can go wrong?

Harrison is an adept at wishy-washy management speak. Much of what he says is completely meaningless, including the notion that Strauss and Bayliss have somehow confected the entity of “England together”. What does that mean? Interestingly, he goes on to say that “everyone’s got a role to play in that”. What does he think is the role of supporters – beyond buying tickets and subscribing to Sky?

His motivations – and growing the game

Early in the interview, Harrison makes his interests and specialisms clear.

I’ve been involved through the commercial side of the game for the last ten or fifteen years. I had a spell at ECB in the early 2000s, and then went around the world learning about how sport is commercialised, about how sport is sold and how it works. And found myself spending quite a bit of time in India, understanding the mechanics behind the [interrupted]… that’s a valuable background to come into a job like this for. 

This is what the ECB were looking for when they hired him: a man who – if nothing else – can squeeze every penny of revenue out of their product.

But Harrison went on to say

People will probably be thinking, commercial background, well he’s only interested in the money. That’s something I will always challenge. Understanding the traditions and the heritage of the game, and 150 years of history in some cases – that’s pretty important in planning our future.

JA: So is there more to cricket administration than making money?

TH: Of course there is. Our job is not about making money, our job is to grow the game.

How’s he going to do that?

[By taking] the right decisions for giving more people opportunities like we’re seeing in front of us here. We want thousands and thousands of people who have never been connected with the game to get an opportunity to do that. We’re trying to strip away the tag of privilege from cricket that it seems to have been encumbered with for as long as I can remember, certainly in this country.

If you spend any time in the sub-continent and understand how, and we’ve all done that, had the opportunity to see how cricket is played at a grass roots level in places like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, you see a very different understanding of what cricket means to a community and how it can bind people together.

So what’s his plan? A romantic colonial notion of street urchins playing cricket with jumpers for goalposts? Pretty much.

JA: It’s an easy thing to say – but, how do you take privilege away? How do you go about doing that?

TH: I think in terms of facilities and you know, the perception. I think the very fact that people associate playing cricket with somehow having to play on a park in a freshly pressed pair of whites, with you know, an £80 cricket bat that’s been provided for you. 

If you’ve been lucky enough to get to a ground or you’re playing in your backyard and you’ve sprayed a pair of stumps on a tree and you use that, and you’re using a stick or something to use as a bat, and you’re getting the feeling of what it’s like to hit a bowler for six, or you know, put it into the top bedroom window, what it’s like to get someone out.

Those are the immediate connections that we need to build on and start at that level rather than thinking about it’s all about playing on a 22 yard pitch with a new ball, helmets and all the rest of it. We really have to get back to what cricket’s really about. And that will help us grow the game.

You can vaguely see what Harrison’s getting at, however clumsily his expression: giving young people increased access to informal versions of the game. But he provides no explanation for what this would entail or how it could be accomplished. Will the ECB use the Sky cash to pay for more facilities? I would have liked to have heard him questioned on exactly how much money the board invests into the genuine grass-roots.

Or is he actually saying – children from under-privileged backgrounds should forget about aspiring to serious club cricket and remain content with scratch games in alleyways?

Harrison continued:

The other thing we’ve gotta do is…be braver about how we take our messages to the market. So let’s not talk so much about English cricket, let’s talk about cricket, let’s get it down to actually talking about a bat and a ball, because a massive part of our multi-cultural society in this country will not connect necessarily with three lions and a crown.

If we’re talking about how to connect with different communities we’re setting about trying to do that in different ways and part of this is about understanding how we’re relevant to communities who are playing cricket without any involvement whatsoever from ECB or local leagues, or you know, we’ve got people playing league cricket in Asda car parks overnight. Starting at midnight and ending at three in the morning. There is so much informal cricket happening out there, we’ve got to find a way of being relevant to those communities, help them out, help them build and bring them into the family that we’re trying to create.

I am not making this stuff up. These are the actual words of the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board. These are his considered views on how to revitalise grass-roots cricket. An emotive evocation of Asda car parks. Talks about bats and balls.

Somewhere in all his meandering waffle is a very important point. A huge gulf has opened up between league cricket within the ECB structure (the clubs who, if anyone gets funding, they will),and the informal recreational game, especially for players of South Asian heritage. Eight months into his job, Harrison has no idea how this might be accomplished, beyond “taking messages to the market”.

Cricket on free to air television

The ECB’s half-arsed and patronising schemes to re-engage the public with cricket would be redundant if the game was available to watch on television for free. What’s Harrison’s stance on this?

JA: One of your key challenges s to get terrestrial television interested in cricket again. They’re not even bidding. How’re you gonna do that?

TH: What we have to do is to build competitions which enables sponsors, commercial partners of all description, not just TV companies, but to get involved in a way that really makes a tangible difference to them. We need to demonstrate a product that drives ratings to ensure that we are getting interest from them at the table.

Can you figure out what this means? Is Harrison saying the priority must be making the team attractive to watch on television before worrying about rights deals? If so, how does this differ from simply wanting England to be successful, which is what they’re supposed to be aiming for anyway. What competitions can the ECB ‘build’ which would enable FTA coverage? What could they devise which would be more popular than the Ashes?

We’re absolutely talking to every television company about how we can become something they want to talk about in their board meetings and in their sports meetings.

That sounds promising, if oddly and timidly pitched. “Dear BBC. Can we talk to you about how we can become something you want to talk about in meetings”.

But:

If you’re talking about terrestrial TV in particular then, we have huge scheduling challenges that make it difficult for terrestrial TV in this country.

If Harrison wants to sell TV rights to terrestrial channels, why’s he banging on about the negatives? Why didn’t he take the opportunity of reminding the BBC what they’re missing?

His contention is also untrue. The BBC, ITV and C4 could comfortably find room for thirty five days of test cricket a year, with coverage from 10.30am to 7pm, on their spin-off or +1 channels, even if they couldn’t on the main networks. Now the BBC has separate news and children’s channels. they could devote BBC 2 to cricket for an entire day. And in a shared-rights deal, a terrestrial channel might only need to find airtime for one or two tests a season, or about thirteen days – the same length as Wimbledon, which the BBC happily accommodates every summer.

There’s no ambition not to talk to terrestrial TV.

Good to hear. But what a peculiar ambition that would be.

For now our interest is about ensuring that we are building within the context of what we have at the moment, which is a very highly successful contract with BBC for radio, and with Sky Sports and Channel 5 for television, that is delivering in spades in terms of the level of broadcast, the level of interest that we’re creating throughout the country. And we’re seeing that through this summer.

On what evidence is Harrison arguing that the current arrangement – with live cricket locked behind a paywall – is “delivering in spades’. How is he connecting public interest in the 2015 Ashes – hardly comparable to 2005 – with the broadcast deals? Does he know what Sky’s viewing figures were? It’s a shame he wasn’t asked. Sky – I have approached them – are not disclosing their average or peak ratings.

On 6th August, during the Trent Bridge test, the TMS streaming site crashed when thousands of people attempted to tune in during the Australian collapse. Weren’t they only resorting to online radio coverage because they were unable to watch TV? Wasn’t this, in truth, a cry of frustration?

What might the ECB let us watch?

There’s definitely a discussion to have about highlights, and those discussions have happened this year already, to try and talk about highlights of 2020 domestic cricket.

For which, I imagine, we’re supposed to feel grateful. County T20 highlights – not even live – isn’t throwing the dog a bone. It’s a tiny fragment of a gnawed, decomposed bone. The England team need to be live on free-access television. Stale clips of a knockabout between Derbyshire and Glamorgan will not set pulses racing across the land.

JA: Looking back at 2004…when you had a very interested terrestrial broadcaster in Channel Four – do you think, in hindsight, you should’ve stayed with that arrangement, kept the terrestrial element?

TH: No, I don’t, at all. The things that we’ve been able to invest in since 2004 have led us to the place that we’re in as a game now, which is with a, you know, a successful international team, a fantastic – we still have eighteen businesses operating and that is an achievement in itself because it hasn’t been easy. A lot of county businesses have sailed close to the wind over the last seven or eight years, but we have eighteen businesses still in place. Largely because of decisions that were made about how cricket is funded.

During the 2005 Ashes, on Channel 4, the peak TV audience was 8.2 million. In 2009 on Sky it was 1.92 million, and in 2013, 1.3 million. Participation in cricket declined by seven per cent in England last year. Only 250,000 people play the a game twelve or more times a season. When Harrison reflects on those figures, does he still think the departure from terrestrial TV was good for cricket?

At least he was honest about the reasons – and, thank goodness, did not resort to the mendacious canard of ‘grass roots investment’. As Harrison concedes, the Sky cash subsidises the counties – and its the counties who elect the ECB. In the financial  year 2014/15, the ECB turned over £174.7 million and declared a gross profit of £155.8 million. Of this, £62.8 million was given to the counties – representing 40% of their profits. By comparison, they spent £24.2 million (15.5%) on ‘enthusing participation’.

But enough of that. Going forward, a different factor will be absolutely critical.

What will be absolutely critical going forward is how we use our digital capability to connect with the youth – you know, the 16-24s now, but it’s actually a lot younger than that, from 5 years old. How do we create new content? How do we get our key personalities and role models out through all the different social media mechanisms that we have now to a way where kids are connecting with them, which doesn’t put the pressure necessarily on us to have the debate about terrestrial TV all the time?

He’s got a point, hasn’t he? Why would 16-24 year old cricket fans want to watch real cricket when they can be enjoying new content and key personalities on social media? Hey kids, check out the ECB Instagram account – it’s well wicked.  Respec!

This is the ECB at their dad-dancing, jargon-grinding, excuse-making, condescending, banal, aloof, selfish worst. Irritated, as Harrison admits, by the TV debate, they’ll try and fob kids off with zany You Tube clips of the England team doing everything apart from actually play cricket. Think I’m exaggerating? The following is from the ‘engaging with the fans’ section of the ECB’s latest annual report.

 

ECB’s social media channels…created a host of eye-catching and engaging videos which were designed to bring out the personalities of the England players – and show the public a different side to familiar cricketing faces. Highlights included England wicketkeeper Jos Buttler trading tips with fellow England glove-man goalkeeper Joe Hart at an exclusive training/cum net session filmed at Manchester City’s training ground and Emirates Old Trafford; England fast bowler James Anderson and captain Alastair Cook going head-to-head in a darts exhibition match as a curtain-raiser prior to the World Darts Championship in London; and batsman Joe Root showing off his strumming skills on the ukulele.

Who needs FTA coverage when instead you can watch Joe Root play the ukelele?

Sacking Peter Moores

I think there was a determination to – to have a plan, and the plan was in place and it was all about ensuring that we were confident about what we were trying to do to achieve what we were trying to achieve over the next four years with the shop window effectively, so the England cricket team which kind of… you know, informs the sentiment of the nation in terms of how they feel about where English cricket stands so it’s so important to get it right.

Getting the strategy right from an England cricket perspective was really key.

Reading this back, you can only wonder how Harrison’s job interview went.

“What are you determined to do?”

“To have a plan”.

“What do you want to ensure you do?”

“To be confident about trying to achieve what we’re trying to achieve”.

“Is it important to get it right?”

“Yes”.

“From which perspective should the England and Wales Cricket Board be getting the strategy right?”

“An England cricket perspective”.

“You’re hired”.

Pietersen’s re-sacking

That’s all ancient history now and it was an important thing to do, I think a lot of it was necessary and had the right motivation behind it however it was reported.

Resorting to the excuse of ‘ancient history’ is the coward’s classic escape route from an awkward subject. And if the ECB regard May 2015 as ancient history, how would they describe other past events which they cite to advance their own arguments – such as Alastair Cook’s last Ashes century (January 2011)?

At this point the interview moved on to another topic, but Harrison should have been challenged much further. Why did he and Strauss re-sack Pietersen? Why was it the ‘important’ and ‘necessary’, and what exactly was their motivation?

DOAG

What did Harrison make of Death Of A Gentleman?

I haven’t seen it, no. I’m aware of the demonstration of course – because I haven’t seen the film I can’t comment directly on the movie, but clearly it’s an ICC…[Agnew interjects]

What does it say about the ECB that they kept an official record of each time Kevin Pietersen looked out of the window, but can’t be bothered to watch the most talked-about cricket documentary in decades?

You might argue that merely because Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber have made a film, Harrison is not obliged to rush out to the cinema. But if you were the chief executive of an organisation heavily criticised by a high-profile film which has been widely discussed by the cricket press, wouldn’t you be tempted to see what the fuss was about?

The truth is that by not seeing DOAG, Harrison retains the perfect excuse for evading questions about its contentions.

Although he did say this:

I think it’s interesting that we’re talking about a film about test cricket when we’re talking in front of a full house after a fantastic Ashes series where we’ve pretty much sold every ticket available.

It takes some gall to use the Oval Ashes test as a barometer for the health of the global game.

The Big Three

If you’re earning 80 or 90% of your revenue from one particular market which is true in the case of India, where at least 80% of that revenue is coming from India. It’s a fair enough argument – you may not agree with it or not but it’s fair enough – for India to expect the lion’s share of that revenue, to help them build the market of – to build cricket following in that country.

Now you may not agree with that statement but that’s a very laudable position for your dominant market to adopt. If you add to that the fact that you weren’t able to do a deal or to come to an agreement with your major partner that they weren’t there anymore. Imagine a world where we were talking about test cricket without India even being involved or international cricket without India being involved.

JA: Do you really believe that might’ve happened? That India could’ve taken the step itself to have moved away from everybody else?

TH: Yeah, I do believe that. I fundamentally believe that. They have the absolute economic ability to do that in a way that is very difficult for other sports to comprehend. But that is the economic animal that India brings to international cricket. So, you know, the other thing to understand is that everybody will be getting more money out of the deal going forward.

They are only two possibilities here – Harrison is either plain stupid or telling fibs. How could India break away from international cricket? Who would the Indian team play? How would they maintain TV audiences and sponsorship revenue in self-imposed exile?

Harrison also makes an extraordinary admission: the ECB will allow themselves and the rest of world cricket to be bullied around by India to whatever extent they wish. Giles Clarke has written the BCCI a blank cheque, and here’s Harrison holding up the stub. From now on, India will always get what they want, simply by virtue of being India. If a future BCCI tyrant ordered us to ban Jewish people from cricket or change the name of the game to Fuckball, we’d have to go along with it.

In line with this philosophy, Harrison believes it “laudable” to rig the game’s finances to India’s benefit, so they can “build the market of – to build cricket following in that country”. What problem is that solving? If you were to write a list of countries in need of investment to help grow the popularity of cricket, India probably wouldn’t be the first country to spring to mind.

Harrison also evades or misunderstands the point. No critic of the Big Three deal argues that India shouldn’t receive their fair share of cricketing revenue. What causes anger is something different – that the trio of nations have turned world cricket into a cartel, corrupting the schedule and rigging the market to their benefit and the detriment of all others.

But hang on. Why do we care about any of this when an overseas star or two might be able to play a few county T20 fixtures? As Harrison explains:

But look, this isn’t an ICC thing, for ICC to discuss at the appropriate time that…the bottom line is that nobody is putting more effort into the future of test cricket than ECB and understanding how we build and control the supply and demand argument for international cricket going forward, and crucially how we marry that with our domestic schedule.

How do we get our international players playing meaningful cricket in our domestic programme? So there is so much to be excited about going forward that actually I misunderstand some of the focus on this.

The World Cup

It wasn’t so long ago that we were talking about a situation where such was the performance of associate nations, and this is going back a few years now and obviously that performance has massively improved. But people were complaining that the first month of the World Cup was largely a kind of very one sided affair that wasn’t doing the job that a World Cup, which is your flagship tournament for world cricket, should be doing.

So what we have at the moment is a situation where there’s never been more teams with a chance of playing in that World Cup. We have a full qualification system which gives teams the opportunity to be there, that’s new, that never happened in the past, and we have a ten team World Cup which pitches the best v. the best, which will be an incredibly exciting competition right from the start for all of our fans around the world to come to England and Wales and be a part of in 2019.

I don’t see that as the doomsday scenario, where you add all of the national teams that are taking part in international world 2020 tournament, which is a more obvious place for international representation to start. You start to see how that can come together so again I think it’s been a bit misunderstood and it’s easy to jump to conclusions about there being an agenda.

You see? It’s all been a simple misunderstanding. There we were thinking the 2019 World Cup had been reduced from fourteen nations to ten, thus depriving several Associate nations of a place. But whereas we understood the number of teams to be ten, there will actually be ten. You can easily identify where the confusion arose. All tens are equal, but in ICC-land, some tens are more equal than others.

“There’s never been more teams with a chance of playing in that World Cup”. Lets rock-and-roll that. I may have this wrong, but looking at the qualification process for the 2011 and 2015, in comparison with 2019, I can’t fathom any significant difference. Please correct me if I’ve missed something. Which countries will have a chance to qualify in 2019 who never have before? More to the point, if four fewer countries will take part in the finals, four fewer teams have a chance of taking part. That is a simple mathematical fact.

What about Harrison’s assertion that 2019 will be more exciting and less one-sided? The bloated 2015 format of 49 matches has been slashed: right down to a slimline, er, 48 matches. In 2015 there were 42 matches before the knockout stage. In 2019, there were will be 45.

Meanwhile, we have the peculiar notion that T20 is “the more obvious place for international representation to start”. To start, maybe. But to finish? If the World Cup is only to be for the big boys, what can the Associates ever hope to aspire to? Is T20 the imposed limit on their ambitions?

But here’s the good news:

There’s also a huge piece of work going on with growing cricket in the USA which is an exciting market for us to look at and how do we start getting a foothold for cricket. We know a lot about the market over there, the size of the market, particularly the south asian diaspora and the extent to which they’re absolutely fanatically support international cricket. We’ve got all the viewing figures, it’s the fourth most valuable market for international cricket rights.

Great news! Afghanistan and Ireland, who’ll earn the ICC nothing but need a helping hand, are being sidelined so the Big Three can invest their energies into the country which, in all the world, least needs money or assistance. I hope you’re all feeling as excited about it as Tom is.

County cricket

JA: Might it compromise the first class structure though if you’re playing fewer championship games?

TH: Well the experts tell us not. The experts tell us, you know, playing sixteen games at the moment – that’s a lot of cricket, and if you take that down to fourteen the implications are not significant on first class cricket performance. 

It’s reassuring to hear that major questions about the future of English cricket are referred to the Experts. Just one question. Who are they?

JA: Are you determined there will still be eighteen counties in four or five years’ time?

TH: I think ultimately we’ve had a structure of eighteen counties for a very long time, I don’t even know how long it is but it’s a long time.

Twenty-three years. Durham became the eighteenth firsr-class county in 1992. Good to know the chief executive of the ECB leaves no stone unturned when it comes to research.

Jargon count

Going forward: he used this phrase seven times.

Market: eleven times.

Achieve: eleven times.

Revenue: five times.

Supporters: once.

The full interview

JA: We’re going to talk to Tom Harrison who of course took over as the Chief Executive of the ECV at the start of the year and here he is. Finally we’ve tracked you down, Tom, to come…

TH: Morning.

JA: …I think your first appearance on TMS, so welcome.

TH: Thank you very much.

JA: Welcome, welcome. It’s not bad for you I mean you start the summer and then you win the Ashes, I mean, that’s pretty… pretty easy start.

TH: After, yeah. I’d love to take more credit but no, look, it’s been fantastic with obviously – it’s been a very interesting six months, six or seven months. And you know, it’s been wonderful to see the way the team have performed this summer. Right the way from the – you know, since they came back from the West Indies and you know, it just seems to have reconnected cricket with the English public and the players should take all the credit for that, they’ve been absolutely fantastic.

JA: We can talk about all that in a second. It might be worth people who don’t know you, perhaps, sort of your background to come in and run the English game. You were a cricketer for a start, that’s under the radar of some.

TH: Well yeah, I played a bit of county cricket in the mid nineties, not to any distinctive level sadly. But you know, played a bit of first class cricket for Derbyshire in the mid-nineties, was at Northants for a time before that. But basically I’m a dyed in the wool cricket fan and have been from, you know, been knee high to a grasshopper. So this job when it came along – and I’ve been involved through the commercial side of the game for the last ten or fifteen years – I had a spell at ECB in the early 2000s, and then went around the world learning about how sport is commercialised, about how sport is sold and how it works. And found myself spending quite a bit of time in India, understanding the mechanics behind the –

JA: Did you understand it?

TH: A little bit, yeah no, you get an understanding of how it works and you know I think that’s a valuable – that’s a valuable background to come into a job like this for. But obviously hugely privileged to be in this position and very excited about the timing we have in the game, the opportunity that we’ve got with all these global events coming our way over the next few years and a world cup in four years’ time to really look forward to. So we’ve been setting about, putting the team in place at ECB, and you’ve seen some of that obviously with the England set up, but to give us the best possible chance of achieving our ambitions over the next few years, you know, we’re pretty excited about that. I think there’s no question that it’s a good time to be involved.

JA: So having been a county cricketer, have you got county cricket in your heart? I mean, I think most of us who have done that and been lucky enough to do it, county cricket’s special to those who’ve played it.

TH: Absolutely it is, and you understand that when you’ve been part of it. You understand the history and the context that you play in that, and if you’ve worn a jumper, you know, you’ve worn the cap at county level it does mean something. That, I think again, is a hugely beneficial position to come into a job like this. Because people will probably be thinking, commercial background well he’s only interested in the money – I, you know, that’s something I will always challenge. Understanding the traditions and the heritage of the game and 150 years of history in some cases… that’s pretty important in planning our future.

JA: Yeah. So is there more to cricket administration than making money?

TH: Of course there is. Our job is not about making money, our job is to grow the game, and to take the right decisions for giving more people opportunities like we’re seeing in front of us here. We want thousands and thousands of people who have never been connected with the game to get an opportunity to do that. And the things that we’re spending time thinking about are the different ways in which we can do that.

We’re trying to strip away the tag of privilege from cricket that it seems to have been encumbered with for as long as I can remember, certainly in this country. And if you – if you spend any time in the sub-continent and understand how, and we’ve all done that, had the opportunity to see how cricket is played at a grass roots level in places like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, you see a very different understanding of what cricket means to a community and how it can bind people together.

JA: It’s an easy thing to say – but, how do you take privilege away? I mean the ticket prices are, as we know, anything up to £100 or more to watch a test match, you gotta pay a subscription to watch it on the telly, the equipment is expensive. How can you take privilege away? That’s your term not mine. But how do you go about doing that?

TH: Well first of all I think it terms of facilities and you know, the perception, you’ve kind of alluded to it in how you’ve phrased the question. I think the very fact that people associate playing cricket with somehow having to play on a park in a freshly pressed pair of whites, with you know, and £80 cricket bat that’s been provided for you. You know, that is just so far away from the traditional kind of connection that most people in this country even who have come through the game have actually been introduced to the game.

It’s normally – if you’ve been lucky enough to get to a ground or you’re playing in your backyard and you’ve sprayed a pair of stumps on a tree and you use that, and you’re using a stick or something to use as a bat, and you’re getting the feeling of what it’s like to hit a bowler for six, or you know, put it into the top bedroom window, what it’s like to get someone out. Those are the immediate connections that we need to build on and start at that level rather than thinking about it’s all about playing on a 22 yard pitch with a new ball, helmets and all the rest of it. We really have to get back to what cricket’s really about. And that will help us grow the game.

The other thing we’ve gotta do is – we’ve been very comfortable I think in English cricket and ECB, in talking to a fairly narrow market and we’ve gotta strip down some of that and be braver about how we take our messages to the market. So let’s not talk so much about English cricket, let’s talk about cricket, let’s get it down to actually talking about a bat and a ball, because a massive part of our multi-cultural society in this country will not connect necessarily with three lions and a crown. So we have to be a bit more clever about how we’re presenting ourselves to the market. But we’ve got all the mechanisms now to do that.

JA: So that means, presumably what – beaming in other series from around the world, or to connect with people not necessarily supporting the three lions?

TH: Yeah there’s a lot of that. We’re not short of cricket coverage in this country, but yeah, I accept there is a – you know, most of it’s behind a paywall, that’s something we are in that environment for at least the next four years and Sky have been a fantastic partner for us and helped us achieve the ambitions that we are trying to achieve for cricket.

But you know, if we’re talking about how to connect with different communities we’re setting about trying to do that in different ways and part of this is about understanding how we’re relevant to communities who are playing cricket without any involvement whatsoever from ECB or local leagues, or you know, we’ve got people playing league cricket in Asda car parks overnight. Starting at midnight and ending at three in the morning. There is so much informal cricket happening out there, we’ve got to find a way of being relevant to those communities, help them out, help them build and bring them into the family that we’re trying to create. This huge machine – you’re seeing 20 odd thousand people here this morning that are all part of it.

JA: Yes, yes. There’s so many things to talk about, Tom. I mean, when it started for you this summer then and it was pretty turbulent, let’s be honest, wasn’t it? Peter Moores lost that last test in West Indies; Kevin Pietersen was sacked or re-sacked on the day that he made 300. I wonder how you felt in that sort of fortnight after that time and looking ahead to the summer?

TH: Well I think there was a determination to – to have a plan, and the plan was in place and it was all about ensuring that we were confident about what we were trying to do to achieve what we were trying to achieve over the next four years with the shop window effectively, so the England cricket team which kind of… you know, informs the sentiment of the nation in terms of how they feel about where English cricket stands so it’s so important to get it right. But yeah those were difficult moments, but at the same time –

JA: Were you worried though?

TH: No, I don’t think I was worried. I think we were largely…we know what we’re trying to do here: let’s stick to the plan, let’s get the right people on the bus, and you know, we’ll go in the right direction. You have to be pretty single minded about that because the one thing that we know about English cricket, and it’s the same with any sport in this country, is that everyone has an opinion and everyone thinks they’re right and ultimately when you’re given the job of fixing something or putting plans in place then you better be sure about what you’re doing.

And that’s what we were, we were you know getting the strategy right from an England cricket perspective was really key. So the appointment of Andrew Strauss was key in that, and then the – what again was important at that point was to grasp a couple of nettles that Andrew and I felt were very important in taking us where we need to go. So yeah, they were uncomfortable but never at any point thinking this isn’t the right thing to do given that we’ve got a plan that we need to stick to.

JA: I was thinking that journey to talk to Kevin Pietersen, to say, to reiterate that he’s not gonna play again as it were, when he’d scored 300 – I wonder how you felt going in the car?

TH: Well yeah it was…it was a day I shan’t forget, put it that way. And actually Andrew and I were following each other and there was a motorbike accident on the way to that meeting that happened just in front of Andrew’s car, so it was a very strange day. But look, you know that’s all ancient history now and it was an important thing to do, I think a lot of it was necessary and had the right motivation behind it however it was reported.

JA: I read a piece, new year this year, and it was before you were in your position of course – saying that of all things ECB really needed was to connect with people again, there seemed to be the last couple of years, just in some corners not everywhere by any means, a sort of dissatisfaction about English cricket and the board. This morning, at the start of this match, England came out, there was a standing ovation here – it was spontaneous, it was people applauding. Do you think you’ve done it? Do you think you have reconnected?

TH: I think the players have done it, I think certainly when you win an Ashes series at home it’s number one on your wish list of things to do which will help you reconnect with your public. But I think they’ve gone a long way further than that and that’s be very human and very accessible to the public, in a way that perhaps England teams of the past have not done.

And that’s been a big part of what Andrew Strauss’ and Trevor’s thinking is in terms of ensuring that we go out with a philosophy that is we are England together, and everyone’s got a role to play in that. And reconnecting in the way that we saw obviously after the win that Trent Bridge – the scenes there were things that will live long in my memory because it was, it looked absolutely genuine, a genuine connection and not a sort of artificial one. We’re also very fortunate we’ve got a team of personalities and it is important in this country that our national teams, particularly in cricket, play with personality and with passion.

Winning isn’t actually enough some of the time and in some cases if you’re playing with passion but not winning you can be forgiven for that if you’re – if you’re seen to be breaking every sinew in your attempts to bring victory.

But you know, it’s doesn’t happen every – again the board and that sort of role is very different in how we need to earn the trust of the English cricket following to give us the ability to make the right decisions for the game. And these are the things that we’re taking time thinking about now is how do we – how do we create a domestic structure which improves what we have and we have a lot of very, you know, a lot to build on. How do we make things better? How do we improve participation? How do we make it easier for cricket clubs to get more teams out on weekends? How do we grow the women’s game and the girl’s game at recreational level?

All of these questions – and of course our schools programme, and ensuring that more children are getting access to a cricket – a positive cricketing experiences at an early age as possible. And these are the things that are taking our time. And actually getting the shop window into a place where it’s, you know, it’s doing it’s job and Andrew and Trevor and Paul have done a fantastic job in doing that, and Peter as well, you know, Peter has a role to play in having set about putting this team in place. So that being in place enables us to get on with the bigger job which is all about ensuring that we’ve got thousands and thousands of kids turning up to games and with their mums and dads and playing on the weekends when they got a chance.

JA: There was a small demonstration this morning outside the gates relating to the film Death of a Gentleman – have you seen that?

TH: I haven’t seen it, no. I’m aware of the demonstration of course – ‘cause I haven’t seen the film I can’t comment directly on the movie, but clearly it’s an ICC –

JA: Yeah. Just explain to people – it relates basically to the three… well, England, Australia and India, sort of running the show really and taking the money from the ICC which we England remember. And obviously the ECB president Charles Clarke is the ECB representative on that board. Are you comfortable with the situation, I mean, is it necessary that this should’ve happened?

TH: Well look, I think it’s interesting that we’re talking about a tournament – sorry – a film about test cricket when we’re talking in front of a full house after a fantastic Ashes series where we’ve pretty much sold every ticket available. The fabric of ICC cricket is that at the moment we have an international…three international pillars of cricket really if you think about it. We’ve got the International ICC events, the multi-national events, which since 2007 are really in a state of rude health and they’ve recently gone out and sold their rights for the next four years ’til 2020 –

JA: The World Cups, World 20-20s?

TH: Yeah the World Cups, World 20-20 champions trophies. And on the other side of it we have very domestic 20-20 tournaments, which are also in their own right developing new markets and developing new fans for the game in a format that is very different. And in the middle we have bilateral cricket which is effectively the kind of bread and butter of most crickets boards revenue streams.

So the crucial thing to understand here is that if you’re developing – if you’re earning 80 or 90% of your revenue from one particular market which is true in the case of India, where at least 80% of that revenue is coming from India. It’s a fair enough argument – you may not agree with it or not but it’s fair enough for India to expect the lion’s share of that revenue, to help them build the market of – to build cricket following in that country. Now that’s a very – you may not agree with that statement but that’s a very laudable position for your dominant market to adopt.

If you add to that the fact that you weren’t able to do a deal or to come to an agreement with your major partner that they weren’t there anymore, imagine a world where we were talking about test cricket without India even being involved or international cricket without India being involved.

JA: Do you think that’s – do you really believe that might’ve happened? Do you really believe that India could’ve taken the step itself to have moved away from everybody else?

TH: Yeah, I do believe that. I fundamentally believe that. I mean, they have the absolute economic ability to do that in a way that is very difficult for other sports to comprehend but that is the economic animal that India brings to international cricket. So, you know, the other thing to understand is that everybody will be getting more money out of the deal going forward.

But look, this isn’t an ICC thing, for ICC to discuss at the appropriate time that… the bottom line is that nobody is putting more effort into the future of test cricket than ECB and understanding how we build and control the supply and demand argument for international cricket going forward, and crucially how we marry that with our domestic schedule. How do we get our international players playing meaningful cricket in our domestic programme? So there is so much to be excited about going forward that actually I misunderstand some of the focus on this.

JA: Just one thing on that – the Olympics has just popped up as being quite a big talking point at the moment and that does – that obviously features in the film but…and the way the game seems to be restricting itself with the World Cups. And thinking of a smaller World Cup that we’ll be hosting actually in 2019 – what’s your view of how cricket should be expanding? Would you like to see cricket in the Olympics for instance?

TH: So two things, I think cricket should have the debate about Olympic representation, I’ve said that on record before. I fundamentally – yeah, it does throw up serious questions for – particularly for us with our season effectively straddling where Olympic games, summer Olympic games, would take place. But those are questions we should ask and understand so at least we can have an informed debate about it. I do think that should happen.

And obviously if you do have an Olympic – a successful Olympic movement for your sport it can be transformational. England has often been seen as the barrier to this discussion and I – you know, that’s just not the case, we’re very happy to have the discussion, it’s something the ECB board is going to be doing in the coming months.

JA: Perhaps it was the case but perhaps it’s not going to be now?

TH: Right. And your other point about the World Cup well it wasn’t so long ago that we were talking about a situation where such was the performance of Associate nations, and this is going back a few years now and obviously that performance has massively improved. But people were complaining that the first month of the World Cup was largely a kind of very one sided affair that wasn’t doing the job that a World Cup, which is your flagship tournament for world cricket, should be doing.

So what we have at the moment is a situation where there’s never been more teams with a chance of playing in that World Cup. We have a full qualification system which gives teams the opportunity to be there, that’s new, that never happened in the past, and we have a ten team World Cup which pitches the best v. the best, which will be an incredibly exciting competition right from the start for all of our fans around the world to come to England and Wales and be a part of in 2019.

I don’t see that as the doomsday scenario, where you add all of the national teams that are taking part in international world 2020 tournament, which is a more obvious place for international representation to start. You start to see how that can come together so again I think it’s been a bit misunderstood and it’s easy to jump to conclusions about there being an agenda…

JA: They’ve brought so much though, haven’t they? I mean, watching the World Cups I’ve been lucky enough to see, the Associates have just added so much and it’s an incentive to spread the game, to get them there to the main event is good for them. You know, it’s been good for the tournament.

TH: It has. But look, there’s never been more work in trying to help Associate nations and step up and we are doing a lot of work with Ireland. You know, we have a great relationship with them and we’re thinking of new ways in which we can enable them to grow a future tours programme of their own.

We’re doing the same with cricket Scotland. We’ve got a programme at the moment that I’m working very closely with Giles Clarke on which is about Afghanistan. We have a three pronged idea in place to help Afghanistan with facilities, with coaching experience, and with fixtures. And we hope to see Afghanistan over here next year playing in fixtures in some description around the UK. We’ve got a UAE – a game against the UAE when we tour in October. We are – you’ll know all about the work that’s been doing with Pakistan and trying to reintegrate Pakistan as much as possible within the context of all the security question marks that raises.

But all of these things are – you know, they’re very important work in growing the game internationally. There’s also a huge piece of work going on with growing cricket in the USA which is an exciting market for us to look at and how do we start getting a foothold for cricket in a way that –

JA: That’s been a battle ground for years, hasn’t it? It’s been the ambition of administrators for a long time to get there and somehow it hasn’t worked.

TH: Let’s see in five years time where we are because I think now there’s the wherewithal to really grasp that opportunity by the scruff of the neck. We know a lot about the market over there, the size of the market, particularly the south asian diaspora and the extent to which they’re absolutely fanatically support international cricket. We’ve got all the viewing figures, it’s the fourth most valuable market for international cricket rights –

JA: Is it really?

TH: Yeah, so there’s a lot of evidence there now to suggest that it’s a great time to go and do something different.

JA: Any rumours? There’s always rumours and scaremongering, stuff coming round isn’t there? Franchises, a horrible word, but that’s something that people have talked about obviously as something that you’re looking at with a view to a T-20 tournament. Where are you with that? What’s the – ?

TH: I think the – where we are with franchises again is a misunderstood word. Typically what it means is private ownership of, you know, third party ownership of teams or of brands if you like. We’re not looking at that as being something that cricket – in this country is ready for.

JA: You can rule out –

TH: You can rule out private ownership. I think that what we are looking at is trying to achieve three things through our domestic structure review through 20-20. We want to first of all make sure that the audiences is as wide as it possibly can be. And bearing in mind we had over 800,000 people this year, coming into 20-20 Blast, Natwest 20-20 Blast, it’s been a fantastic tournament, it’s 20 per cent up on last year. So to a certain extent we’re adding to something that’s already in good shape.

Second thing we’re trying to achieve is a level of performance which pits the best against the best as often as possible. And if there’s an area of argument and context then that’s an area with a bit of a question mark at the moment.

The third area is can we make a significant commercial return back to the game from domestic cricket, which in the context of 20-20 in this country we’ve never done to a massive extent in the way that IPL has or that Big Bash has in Australia. So if we can achieve something which achieves those three things through our domestic review discussions then we’ll be going a long way to enhancing what we have at the moment, which is a – a very effective domestic structure.

But there are unintended consequences of having the – the structure we have at the moment. One of those unintended consequences is exhausted players halfway through the season who are playing sometimes three formats in a week. And when you’re trying to hone skills to get players up to a level where they need to step into an international dressing room, to help us achieve the very important ambitions we have at that level, then that’s a huge problem for us that we need to address.

JA: I can imagine what Fred Trueman would say to the thought of people being exhausted these days. The overs that he used to bowl – he’d be chuntering away up there somewhere. Are they exhausted?

TH: They are exhausted. We’ve been – Colin and I are at the moment, with other members of the ECB leadership team, we’re going round the counties, we’re eleven in now, eleven out of eighteen, and we’re hearing this a lot from directors of cricket that you know, getting players out onto the park at this time of year is very, very taxing.

And players are worried more about getting through the game than they are about putting in the absolute limit of their performance. They’re trying to sustain themselves ’til the end of the year and not get injured. And that’s putting a lot of pressure on directors of cricket, on county staff. Maybe that what happens then is the thing that’s compromised is the one thing we shouldn’t be compromising on which is the quality of cricket that all our fans are watching on television and in ground around the country.

JA: Is one of your ambitions to have an IPL type tournament then? Where there are a restricted number of teams, not franchises, but ECB teams as it were and to run something and also have a Blast type tournament as well. Could  you see two T20 tournaments functioning?

TH: I can see a situation where we have a concentrated – a concentration of talent. However we get to that…the desirable position is to have a block in the middle of the summer which is given to a particular format. Now whether the domestic structure proposals for next year are going, is to try and deliver an element of this, is to get to a point where – create some space in the calendar and controversially that means probably playing one or two less first class matches, less next year than this year and enabling the formats to breathe a bit. And to give players the ability of getting into playing a specific format over an elongated period. That will raise the performance levels.

It won’t compromise on the very important commercial revenue streams that 20-20 is delivering around the country. And it will help us make sure that 20-20 being played at the time of year where we can get the most fans into the grounds to see it.

JA: Might it compromise the first class structure though if you’re playing fewer games?

TH: Well the experts tell us not. The experts tell us, you know, playing sixteen games at the moment – that’s a lot of cricket, and if you take that down to fourteen the implications are not significant on first class cricket performance. In fact they may enhance it and that, that has to be the idea. We’ve got to get, I suppose, people understanding if we are gonna compromise in an area then let’s not compromise happen with a product that we’re putting out of the park ‘cause that is ultimately why we are here.

And supporters of counties around the country want to see their teams playing at the very limit of their ability every time they go onto the park. That will help us sustain a better – a better county structure going forward.

JA: Are you determined there will still be eighteen counties in four or five years time?

TH: Look I think ultimately we’ve had a structure of eighteen counties for a very long time, I don’t even know how long it is but it’s a long time. ECB is committed to ensuring that counties are in a position where they’re able to sustain their own businesses. But they have to be sustainable businesses. You know, ultimately we are not the bank of last resort and that’s not the role that ECB should play. What we are absolutely in the business of doing to ensuring that we are doing everything we can to put programmes in place and to put structures in place that enable our county clubs to as successful and sustainable as possible.

And we’re also looking at ways of being able to mitigate the risk that counties have to take going forward. Can we change the way in which financially we operate with counties to give them more breathing space? We want to get to a point ultimately where what is good for Derbyshire and what is good for Hampshire, is good for England and vice versa. That transition is underway, I think we can get there. But it’s – it’s a journey that takes a lot of trust and a lot of, you know, a lot of key decisions need to be made about how we operate and how we – our relationships with counties is at the very heart of that.

JA: One of your key challenges I’d’ve thought, Tom, is to get terrestrial television interested in cricket again, interested in showing, they’re not even bidding. How’re you gonna do that?

TH: Well I think terrestrial television companies are like any normal television company. They’ll follow interest and passion where people are showing an interest in – in a particular tournament. What we have to do is to build competitions which enables sponsors, commercial partners of all description, not just TV companies, but to get involved in a way that really makes a tangible difference to them. If you’re talking about terrestrial TV in particular then, we have huge scheduling challenges that make it difficult for terrestrial TV in this country.

In this country if you’re a commercial terrestrial television channel you’re interested in ratings and rating drive your income machine. And we need to demonstrate a product that drives ratings to ensure that we are getting interest from them at the table. Now one of the conversations we want to have going forward, and this is not a relevant conversation for four more years, you know, 20-20 is the first year that we will be able to even contemplate putting a part of our cricketing summer onto – onto a free to air network. And who knows that free to air television looks like in five years time, it’s changing almost, you know, certainly by the year now.

We’re absolutely talking to every television company about how we can become something they want to talk about in their board meetings and in their sports meetings. But for now our interest is about ensuring that we are building within the context of what we have at the moment, which is a very highly successful contract with BBC for radio, and with Sky Sports and Channel 5 for television that is delivering in spades in terms of the level of broadcast, the level of interest that we’re creating throughout the country, and we’re seeing that through this summer.

JA: Hindsight’s easy, Tom, but do you think looking back at 2004 when you had satellite, when you had a very interested terrestrial broadcaster in Channel Four – do you think, in hindsight, you should’ve stayed with that arrangement, kept the terrestrial element?

TH: No, I don’t, at all. I think, you know, the things that we’ve been able to invest in since 2004 have led us to the place that we’re in as a game now, which is with a, you know, a successful international team, a fantastic – we still have eighteen businesses operating and that is an achievement in itself because it hasn’t been easy. A lot of county businesses have sailed close to the wind over the last seven or eight years, but we have eighteen businesses still in place. Largely because of decisions that were made about how cricket is funded.

What will be absolutely critical going forward is how we use our digital capability to connect with the youth – you know, the 16-24s now, but it’s actually a lot younger than that, from 5 years old. How do we create new content? How do we get our key personalities and role models out through all the different social media mechanisms that we have now to a way where kids are connecting with them, which doesn’t put the pressure necessarily on us to have the debate about terrestrial TV all the time? As I said it’s not relevant for four years…

JA: So there’s no chance at all – there’s nothing happening between now and –

TH: Well there’s nothing – let’s say the context of our contract with Sky, all live cricket would certainly be, will be on Sky and we’re delighted about that, that’s a good position to be in. There’s definitely a discussion to have about highlights and those discussions have happened this year already to try and talk about highlights of 20-20 domestic cricket. And our tournament isn’t in a – isn’t structured in a way that makes sense for terrestrial TV highlights package to be meaningful at the moment. We need to work on that.

And maybe we can have that discussion next year again. But there’s no ambition not to talk to terrestrial TV but at the same time we have to be ultimately realistic about the funding behind this game and the fantastic partnership that we have had for a very long time with Sky.

JA: Tell me about about Trevor Bayliss, he somebody who keeps a very low profile, got his big sun hat on, do you know him at all? He seems to have – coincidence or not – but he and Paul Farbrace are ready to do something for this team.

TH: Yeah, Trevor’s a fantastic guy, I don’t know him well. Obviously through the interview process – and then we’ve had three or four meetings since and, but it’s normally a fairly, you know, “everything alright Trevor?”, “Yep thanks, everything’s great.” But we’ve had a couple of meetings and he’s settled in really well and you’re seeing the start of his impact on this team. I think he’s been a fantastic addition to our team and I think we will see Trevor’s stamp on our cricketers over the course of the next four years for sure. He’s a great asset to us and we’re delighted that he’s joined us.

JA: Was he Andrew Strauss’s pick? Was he the sort of man Andrew Strauss said “I think he’s the man for us”?

TH: Yeah I think that’s probably fair, yeah.

JA: And Andrew – when he got the job people were thinking well he’s too close to the game for this one, people were saying well he hasn’t stepped away and done enough. What qualities do you see in him in the job that he’s doing now?

TH: For me crucially it’s a connection with the game that isn’t too distant right now in terms that it hasn’t been too long since he was in the dress room, but it’s the qualities outside cricket that actually – that really set Andrew aside I think, the leadership qualities, the ability to think in a very structured way about a very difficult challenge which is building towards what we’re trying to achieve. And a man of total integrity who has bought an enormous amount already to the leadership team at ECB.

He obviously gives us huge cricketing credibility, which is a massive asset when we’re taking on difficult issues. Andy gives us a I think a belief that our vision frankly for the game, as Andrew’s as concerned about the participation element of the game as he is about the England cricket’s  performance, so he understands that – no matter how successful we are in the international arena we also need to be as successful in delivering a future for the game and he’s completely bought into that, and that sort of 360 view on things was a thing that really appealed to me. Yeah, he’s a fantastic addition to our team for sure.

JA: Well thanks for coming on. Such a lot going on, isn’t there? Do you have any sort of thought when they might be announcements made about restructuring?

TH: Yeah, we’ve got some pretty key meetings in early September which are the first time really – on top of the meetings we’re all undertaking on a kind of one to one basis at the moment. There’s a county chairmen’s meeting, the county chief executives’ meeting at the start of September which will I guess set the wheels in motion. But the broader strategy, those discussions are pretty well developed, we’re really excited about the direction of travel and over the winter you’ll see a lot of announcements coming out of ECB, hopefully exciting stuff for people to get on board with.