It would be wrong to say there’s a spring in Richard Thompson’s step as he ticks off another lap of Lord’s to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Society. After all, it’s been only two weeks since he had knee surgery, and medics have told him to divide the 100 laps between clockwise and anti-clockwise, to ease pressure on the joint.
But the ECB chairman is feeling more chipper than he did during a summer in which English cricket was at times going in one direction only – round and round in circles, and getting absolutely nowhere.
We are speaking the day after the season ended with England’s one-day series win against Sri Lanka at the Oval and the last gasps of the County Championship, decided 24 hours earlier in Warwickshire’s favour. When Thompson says ‘it’s been a rollercoaster’, he isn’t joking.
The overall headline, he believes, is positive: the English game is better placed at the end of the season than it was at the start. After losing the Test series to New Zealand, triggering the retirement of Ben Stokes and the sacking of Brendon McCullum, England won their remaining five series across the three formats, and appear to have placed the right men in the right jobs: McCullum in charge of an increasingly impressive white-ball set-up, and Stephen Fleming set for the Test role.
Thompson speaks admiringly of the ‘alchemy’ between McCullum and Harry Brook, the limited-overs captain – under them, the T20 side have won 23 games out of 26 – and says Fleming is ‘very committed to doing a role that he’s always wanted to do’.
But it’s fair to say the path to clarity has been strewn with chaos and confusion – even carnage – as drinking escapades elbowed runs and wickets off the back pages. The charge sheet is now part of history: Brook in Wellington, Ben Duckett in Noosa, Stokes and Gus Atkinson in the Rex Rooms, Brydon Carse in Derby. And while Thompson has forgiven, he can’t entirely forget.
‘We’re through the worst of it,’ the ECB chairman Richard Thompson says of the England cricket team’s rollercoaster summer. ‘But there was behaviour that was totally unacceptable’
Thompson, with radio presenter Jamie Theakston, completes 100 laps of Lord’s to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Society
‘We’re definitely through the worst of it now,’ he tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘But I think the point is that there was behaviour that was just totally unacceptable. If you play for your country, there’s no way you can behave like that.
‘You’re measured by a far higher standard. We certainly want to learn, and I think the changes we’ve made demonstrate that.’
Has the penny finally dropped? ‘As much as I hope it can. Something that happened three years ago that we don’t know about could suddenly blow up.
‘But, culturally, when you’ve got a new captain and a new coach, it provides an automatic reset, and that’s now happened. The way Joe (Root) spoke in particular about the more recent issues could not have articulated it any better.’
Thompson says suggestions that McCullum should have been removed from the Test job immediately after the Ashes were impractical, since England were heading straight to Sri Lanka for a white-ball tour, followed by the T20 World Cup.
And he dismisses the argument that the ECB erred in making him all-format coach as ‘hindsight’. More important, he says, is where England have ended up: ‘We’ve retained Baz. If we had lost him completely, that would have been a real loss, because we still knew he had so much to offer.’
All the while, the Hundred embarked on its first season under part-private ownership, and with concerns mounting among the 11 non-host counties that they will eventually be left behind – despite the £25million windfall guaranteed each club by the sale of the eight franchises.
Thompson insists that a gap has always existed between the ‘haves and the have-nots’ of the county game. But he points to Northamptonshire’s victory in the T20 Blast as a reminder that the smaller clubs continue to pack a punch on the field. Indeed, in the last 20 years, only Derbyshire among the 18 first-class counties have failed to win one of three main trophies.
‘We’ve retained Baz (McCullum, right). If we had lost him completely, that would have been a real loss, because we still knew he had so much to offer’
‘Nothing’s ever perfect, but I don’t think the 18-county structure has ever been more financially secure,’ Thompson says of the domestic game
‘Prior to the Hundred, you could say, well, are the 18 counties safe?’ he says. ‘And, arguably, I would say I’m not sure. Since we’ve done the Hundred deal, they absolutely are, and I always have been an 18-county advocate.’
At a time when football is threatening to be torn apart by the Manchester City scandal, Thompson is proud of cricket’s relative stability.
‘All the counties are completely underwritten, all toxic debt has been taken out. We’re the only sport in the country that isn’t held back by debt and spurious owners or other issues that are causing tension.
‘Our game is driven principally by its members. It’s far more transparent in its leadership and its ownership structures. Nothing’s ever perfect, but I don’t think the 18-county structure has ever been more financially secure.’
Thompson says speculation about a separate TV deal for the Hundred, driven by private investors keen to recoup their expenditure, is ‘not happening any time soon’, and says the investors are ‘very happy’ about the way the first year went, despite concerns about ticket pricing.
And he stresses that it is the ECB who are still in control of the competition – pre-empting the argument that the board have given up the prime month of August to foreign businessmen.
‘There was a suggestion that Pakistani players would not be picked up,’ he says. ‘It was a scurrilous rumour that should never have circulated in the first place, and we soon made sure that was never going to be the case.
‘But it showed that the ECB still provide that influence around the tournament. The team owners recognise their role, and where the boundary exists between owning a team and running a competition.’
Thompson says private investors are ‘very happy’ about the way the first year of the revamped Hundred, won by Manchester Super Giants (above), unfolded
Thompson speaks admiringly of the ‘alchemy’ between McCullum and Harry Brook
Thompson, who is excited about the future of the English game, talks tactics with pace bowler Jofra Archer
Thompson, who turns 60 this month, will be in the chair until the end of the 2028 season, by which time he will have served six years in the role.
They have not been dull, encompassing the rise and fall of Bazball, the partial privatisation of the home summer, off-field headaches, even the return of Kevin Pietersen.
With about 75 laps to go, Thompson still has the energy to exude optimism: ‘Both on and off the field, despite the challenges we’ve had, I think we’ve managed them as best we can, and we’ve come out of it stronger.’
He may be right. But few would care to predict where the rollercoaster goes next.
Visit www.alzheimers.org.uk for more information
