Ball Tax Scandal

 

ECB urged to reopen investigation into Middlesex cricket ball tax scandal.
Ben Rumsby and Will Macpherson.
London Daily Telegraph.
Friday, 17 November 2023.
PTG 4346-21167.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is facing calls to reopen its investigation into Middlesex after the emergence of a potential tax scandal there over the non-payment of Value Added Tax (VAT) on cricket balls.  The UK's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) are also under pressure to probe the allegations involved at a county who the ECB fined and hit with a suspended points deduction in September after finding them guilty of financial mismanagement (PTG 4290-20939, 12 September 2023).

The ECB had until this week been unaware of claims made by Middlesex’s former interim finance director, David Thompson, who blew the whistle on the potential non-payment of thousands – maybe even tens of thousands – of pounds in VAT on the club’s buying and selling of cricket balls.  Thompson and Edward Lord, a former independent director at the county and a current member, were at the club when the potential scandal erupted and both say they had heard discussions indicating the practice had been commonplace.  

The county have admitted to a single issue of that nature during Thompson’s brief tenure in 2021 over a £UK30,000 ($A57,570) payment for cricket balls but that the money was immediately refunded when chief executive Andrew Cornish identified accepting it was inappropriate for VAT purposes.  They said they had found no evidence of any such payments pre-dating Cornish’s own appointment two years ago but Lord has demanded an independent inquiry, while Thompson has said he would be willing to co-operate with one.

Lord, a Justice of the Peace and non-executive director of several companies and public bodies, was on the board at Middlesex for four years before standing down in April, having previously complained about how the club was being run.  Revealing he was considering not renewing his 20-year membership in protest, he said: “The governance and financial management at Middlesex is woeful and the alleged tax irregularities deserve a full investigation.  I hope these serious allegations will prompt the ECB to reopen its investigation into Middlesex. The club really needs new management and a refreshed board”.  Middlesex have been approached for comment. while the ECB, HMRC and FCA declined to comment.

 Sorry Vatman not ...

Group of MCC members plotting to oust ‘pandering’ chairman.
Martyn Ziegler.
The Times.
Saturday, 11 November 2023.
PTG 4339-21144.

A group of members are plotting to remove the Marylebone Cricket Club’s (MCC) chairman as the culture wars continue to engulf Lord’s. Bruce Carnegie-Brown is under fire on several fronts, about comments he made about members at an Annual General Meeting (AGM), the reversal of a decision to end the long-running Eton-Harrow and Oxford-Cambridge fixtures at Lord’s, and his indication that the name of the Warner Stand will be kept under review because of the ancestors of Sir Pelham Warner having links to slavery (PTG 4330-21099, 3 November 2023).

A motion, which is being drawn up by Mike Milton, will be tabled at MCC’s AGM next year, or at a special general meeting, is aimed at forcing Carnegie-Brown, a 63-year-old businessman who also chairs Lloyd’s of London, to step down. Milton and his group are among the traditionalists who dismiss the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket’s criticism of MCC for being elitist and unrepresentative (PTG 4230-20684, 28 June 2023). “All the chairman is doing is pandering to the ICEC’s criticisms of the club”, Milton said. “It was obvious in advance what they were going to say”.

It looks like being a busy year ahead for Mark Nicholas, the new MCC president (PTG 4306-21005, 3 October 2023), who has told Milton he wants a meeting with him over the unrest at the club when he returns to England at the end of November after a stint commentating abroad. Nicholas succeeded Stephen Fry, who had his own issues during his year as president, and has promised to take a hands-on approach.

Lord's Long Room members are in 'last chance saloon’.

Nick Hoult.
London Daily Telegraph.
Thursday, 2 November 2023.
PTG 4329-21094.

Bruce Carnegie-Brown is sitting in the Lord’s pavilion in an office close to where the most astonishing scenes of crowd behaviour marred the Ashes Test there this summer.  Carnegie-Brown, chair of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) since 2021, is giving his first newspaper interview, two years into a potential six-year term in office. Neither a county nor a governing body with any significant executive power in cricket, MCC is always striving for relevance and a role beyond being an exclusive members club with a 29-year waiting list (PTG 4306-21005, 3 0ctober 2023).

This is more acute than ever because this venerable institution is faced with a rapidly evolving sport, pitting tradition against modernity as Test cricket - and nowhere is more synonymous with Test cricket than Lord’s - struggles in other parts of the world and the English authorities push through a wide-ranging diversity program that presents unique challenges for MCC.  Whatever your view on the report by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket, it placed MCC in particularly in a difficult position  (PTG 4303-20997, 27 September 2023). It was the only other cricketing institution apart from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to be identified in the report; painted as a bastion of white, male privilege with its members regarded as obstacles to modernisation (PTG 4229-20679, 27 June 2023).

The report landed on the eve of the Lord’s Ashes Test, no doubt deliberately timed, and just a few days later the ground was gripped by unprecedented scenes as the Australian team were barracked by the crowd, and then involved in stand up rows with members as they walked through the Long Room to have lunch, following the stumping incident involving Jonny Bairstow.  It was a bad look just days after some of the club’s members were described in the ICEC report as ”out of touch, elitist and unrepresentative of both the wider population and those who play cricket”. 

Apologies were issued by the club, and a member was recently barred and two others suspended following an investigation (PTG 4309-21020, 6 October 2023). Cricket Australia have thanked MCC for their actions, but the club is nervously awaiting the next series of The Test, the Amazon fly-on-the-wall documentary. Film crews followed the Australian team and MCC worries the players may not have been quite so diplomatic as their bosses.

Lord’s is the only cricket ground in the world where supporters can get as close to the players as the members in the Long Room; a tradition that has stood for so long nobody knows when it began. It is an opportunity for members to clap players from both teams - an image that sits neatly alongside the club’s custodianship of the laws of the game and its Spirit of Cricket preamble.  “Yes I was shocked. It is extraordinary the issue was about the Spirit of Cricket. We are hardly exemplars of the Spirit of Cricket if we are abusing cricketers in the pavilion”, says Carnegie-Brown. “Standing in the Long room is one of the great privileges. That [closing the Long Room when players are present] is exactly the potential threat if that behaviour is to reoccur. The Australians were extremely generous in their reaction to it but I would certainly say we are in last chance saloon on that”.

There will be changes next year. Members will not be allowed to stand on the pavilion stairwell where some of the ugliest scenes took place and the walkway for the players in the Long Room will be expanded with more stewards present. “What we are trying to do is remind the members of the standards we expect. It makes clear this behaviour is unacceptable. We will review all of it before the 2024 season to make sure we have all our protocols right”.

The ICEC report was particularly critical of the decision to keep the Eton-Harrow and Oxford-Cambridge matches until 2028, a stop-gap move designed to quell member revolt after the executive under Carnegie-Brown decided to end the hosting of ‘historic fixtures’ at Lord’s.  It led to a petition to force a special general meeting and although the vote was shelved, a subsequent survey of the club’s membership was pretty evenly split (44 percent for retaining Eton-Harrow, 43 against). It became a battleground issue over the management of the club between an executive seen as disconnected and dictatorial by some of its membership, and a pocket of activists viewed by some as obstacles to change. 

Carnegie-Brown admits mistakes were made but hopes the annual hosting of state school cricket tournaments and more access to Lord’s through its expanding hubs coaching program will naturally evolve the club away from Eton-Harrow.   “One of the other challenges is blending traditions with progress”, he says. “We engaged our members, probably the wrong way round in that debate, and the membership was very evenly divided.  My own view is you do not need a 51 percent majority in a club to continue to play games. If there is a significant percentage of our membership interested in the game continuing to be played, we will do that. I don’t think it gets in the way of the other more progressive things we do. Inclusivity is about and rather than or and we can do the things we want to do while honouring our traditions. The frustration for me is that while many members are passionate about Eton versus Harrow, not enough turn up to watch the game. For me that is a big test of relevance”.

It is the R-word: relevance. While the ICEC report made for “very uncomfortable” reading, it did praise MCC’s Foundation charity and its cricket ‘hubs’ program that has run since 2012 and will be expanded next year thanks to extra funding of £UK1 million ($A1.9m), half each from MCC and ECB). It will grow from 77 hubs to 150 over the next two years, providing free coaching, access to kit and travel bursaries for 5,000 children. Split into six regions, each will have ‘springboard programmes’ which will identify the most talented and help them onto county pathways programs. There will also be an annual hubs final day at Lord’s.

“Their [ICEC] argument as to why MCC is extensively named is because of the importance of the club and history of the game. There is a narrative in the report of the game being developed through the eyes of the British empire and therefore of privilege, particularly white privilege. We have clearly been a part of all of that. I hope our response has been proportionate to what we have faced”, says Carnegie-Brown. “By having influence in the game and increasing the number of participants with hubs focused on state schools, we are taking a responsible position. We want to build that opportunity and sense of accessibility to Lord’s for a greater range of people than ever. That is how we adapt to a changing world: making Lord’s more accessible and meeting the aspirations of more people”.

Carnegie-Brown, 63, describes himself as a “not a very good cricketer” and fell in love with the sport listening to the BBC World Service as a child when he lived in Libya, his father’s job taking the family all over the world. He attended Cheltenham College and Oxford before joining JP Morgan. He joined MCC in 1997 after waiting ‘“about 15 years”  for his membership but only joined the finance committee in 2018, rising within just three years to become chair.

It has not been easy. He offered his resignation last year and was handed a suspended six-month ban by the club for a ‘hot mic’ incident at MCC’s annual general meeting in 2022 when he was overheard joking members were taking a long time to return from a break because they were taking an “age to empty their colostomy bags”.  Carnegie-Brown apologised for his “ill-judged” comment and accepted it was “insensitive and inappropriate” (PTG 3949-19388, 13 July 2022).

He has been chair of Lloyd’s of London since 2017 and is vice-chair of Banco Santander and estimates he spends about two days per week on MCC business. He has operated in the background while high-profile presidents Stephen Fry and now Mark Nicholas have become the public faces of the club, both skilled media operators. However, it is the chair who wields the real power; the president is largely a ceremonial role.  

It is toeing the narrow line between modernity and tradition that seems set to define Carnegie-Brown’s term. Predecessors spent years battling rows over the redevelopment of Lord’s, issues that have died down recently (PTG 4004-19686.21 September 2022). Instead it is how to repurpose MCC that is the challenge: a Lord’s franchise in the Hundred, its continual hosting of two Test matches when the format is struggling across the world and protecting its traditions while embracing change.

The club has a seat on the recently formed Professional Game Committee set up by the ECB to manage the domestic game so has an influential voice on the shape and future of the Hundred. Carnegie-Brown is diplomatic on the issue but it is clear MCC believes the competition is a powerful force for change and a potentially massive revenue stream. After all, the Lord’s franchise will be the most fiercely fought over, worth potentially hundreds of millions, but selling the club’s name could be difficult and many members dislike the Hundred anyway.

“The Hundred has been successful in attracting new audiences to the game, particularly families. The women’s game has thrived enormously. In the second year, so not this year just gone, 85 percent of people who came to Lord’s to watch a Hundred fixture had never been before and I think that’s a pretty powerful statistic for improving access to the game”, he says.  Evolving the membership is hard, and while Carnegie-Brown points to 19 percent of applicants now being female (a rise of 11 percent from last year), the long waiting period makes increasing gender parity and ethnic minority members  “a challenge”. Playing membership offers a route but is only available to those good at cricket.

The potential renaming of the Warner Stand could reopen the battle lines between modernists and traditionalists but protecting the club’s history remains important, says Carnegie-Brown (PTG 4329-21094 below).  MCC, for example, recently paid for   the renovation of Gubby Allen’s grave, which had fallen into disrepair. It has commissioned portraits of Clare Connor and Claire Taylor. The next to be unveiled will be of Sir Alastair Cook.How about statues? “They are a bit more difficult these days,” says Carnegie-Brown. “They end up in the Bristol channel”.

Michael Vaughan's Willey Flap