Well alleluia, English cricket doesn’t seem able to put a foot wrong these days. After hitting three cherries with Rob Key, Brendon McCullum and Ben ‘Bazball’ Stokes, they may well have struck the jackpot with the appointment of Richard Thompson, the Surrey chairman, to take over as head of the English Cricket Board, something this column has long advocated.
Thompson has plenty going for him: uniquely perhaps among the game’s administrators he is both traditional and forward thinking. Traditional enough to have realised the Texan conman ‘Sir’ Allen Stanford, with his million-quid pile of money on the Lord’s outfield, was a wrong-un. And forward thinking enough to have championed the women’s game, as well as diversity, with Ebony Rainford Brent’s African–Caribbean engagement programme, more quickly than you can say ‘Yorkshire we have a problem’.
Thompson was tip-top on reduced prices for kids at Surrey, something Lord’s could learn from
He revolutionised Surrey during his time at the Oval, turning it into one of the most powerful county set-ups in the country and increasing its profits. Membership shot up and Thompson was tip-top on reduced prices for kids, something Lord’s could learn from. Off the pitch he wanted fans’ experience to be as good as possible, even going so far as to analyse queue times, knowing that if it took you too long to get a pie and a pint, you wouldn’t be back next time.
He is a highly successful businessman and has sharp attention to detail, which will come in handy when trying to sort out the absurdly cluttered playing schedule. The domestic game is eating itself: here a T20 competition, there a Hundred match, a Royal National 50-over contest somewhere else, while Test matches and the Country Championship are ever present.
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