No consultation with the owners, ie the members, of NCCC has been had. It is true to say that zero communication on this matter has been had with the membership. Chair Hunt's last word was that there hadn't been a proposal, so there was nothing to inform members about or to discuss.
There is no cricket at Trent Bridge in the 12 days before this deadline to be able to inform and convass opinions from the members. Over to you Chair Hunt; as it stands Notts CCC does not have an opinion and should be abstaining from the vote.
Does anyone smell a rat? Perhaps the rat is a relative of the rat that sold County Cricket down the river and introduced the competition (The Hinderance) in the first place against members' wishes. A failed experiment that then got extended and now they want to expand it as well.
21/04
20/04
18/04
17/04
It's probably the least you can do when you build a stadium miles from anywhere and/ or amenities and infrastructure...
Hawks Free bus Shame the service isn't for Championship and the stadium is a soulless dump when you get there.
16/04
Would 14 games with the kookaburra kill off the County Championship or improve it?
15/04
Worcestershire Move More Likely away from New Road
10/04
09/04
ECB in talks to ensure players are compensated if a county side goes bust.
Will Macpherson.
London Daily Telegraph.
Saturday, 6 April 2024.
PTG 4479-21703.
London Daily Telegraph.
Saturday, 6 April 2024.
PTG 4479-21703.
Senior English cricket officials are holding talks over creating a policy to ensure players are not left unemployed and abandoned should a county club go out of business. Over the past two years, three clubs from rugby’s Premiership – Wasps, Worcester Warriors and London Irish - as well as a top Championship team in Jersey Reds, have folded, with their players and staff immediately finding themselves unemployed and seeking other work. Now officials are holding talks to ensure that the same does not happen to cricketers.
Representatives from the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) have been discussing formalising a policy over what happens to a club’s cricketers if their county goes bust. The ECB has expressed an absolute determination to ensure that all 18 counties survive (PTG 4477-21696, 4 April 2024), but professional clubs have been hit hard in recent years by the impact of Covid-19, rampant inflation, energy bills and high interest rates, with a number finding themselves in financial difficulty.
Insiders have particular concern over the situation at Gloucestershire. Their accounts are due to be published in the next fortnight, and are expected to make even more difficult reading than their most recently published accounts, for the year ending 31 January 2023, which showed a loss of £UK570,000 ($A1.1 million). The club’s treasurer, Rebecca Watkin, said in those accounts “there is no disguising the fact that this has not been a good year financially for the club”.
It was revealed in December that Gloucestershire are exploring a move away from the historic Nevil Road ground in Bristol, which has been their home since 1889, to an out-of-town venue with more seats and, crucially, a greater commercial potential. It is understood that club officials are confident that another difficult set of financial results would not provide an existential threat to the club.
The proposed model being discussed would see players paid by the ECB from central funds allocated for that county. These payments to players would last until they were able to source alternative employment up to a fixed period, most likely somewhere between six and 12 months. Each first-class county receives annual payments from the ECB as part of the county partnership agreement and assorted other fees and funds. For some counties, ECB payments make up more than 50 percent of total income.
In recent years the ECB has agreed to pay some of this money in advance to counties struggling financially. Last month, an ECB board meeting officially approved a policy regarding such advanced or extra payments to counties, so that a framework of consequences (in terms of points of deductions or similar) is in place should a county have to keep asking for more support. In 2016, Durham accepted a £UK3.8m ($A7.3m) financial aid package from the ECB, but were relegated in the County Championship and handed a series of points deductions across competitions.
This month, county chiefs will meet with the ECB in the latest round of consultations over the potential sale of part of the eight teams in the Hundred to private investors. The sale of Hundred teams should ease counties’ financial issues, because the proceeds would be spread through the game, but details over the exact split of funds (and therefore which counties would benefit) is still to be finalised (PTG 4477-21697, 4 April 2024).
06/04
County season opens with rain, and the use of ‘Kookaburra’ balls.
PTG Editor.
Saturday, 6 April 2024.
PTG 4479-21700.
The English weather that saw only four of the opening nine County Championship matches abandoned without a ball bowled on Friday, and an Australian cricket ball, were the dominant forces on the opening day of the 2024 season, writes Will Macpherson from the London Daily Telegraph. And where cricket was played bat held sway over ball because just 26 wickets fell across five matches.
This could be down, writes Macpherson, to the use of the Australian ‘Kookaburra’ ball which has a less pronounced seam than the normally used ‘Dukes’ that are made in north-east London and is the default ball used in the game in England and Wales. Over the past two seasons, English officials have trialled the ‘Kookaburra' ball in county cricket in the hope of promoting spin bowling and nullifying medium pace to make batting easier and help young batsmen build innings (PTG 4228-20674, 26 June 2023).
Last year, there were two 'Kookaburra rounds', in which, according to the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), the use of spin bowlers was up from 23 percent to 33, so the trial has been expanded to four matches this year. That does not mean it is unanimously popular, however. Alec Stewart, who won three County Championships as Surrey director of cricket, said recently: “I just don’t understand it at all. I think it’s the worst decision ever” (PTG 4249-20764, 15 July 2023).
The match officials that did manage to get out on the ground on Friday were ECB Professional Umpires Team (PUT) members Hasan Adnan, Paul Baldwin, Graham Lloyd, Tom Lungley, James Middlebrook, Mark Newell, Steve O’Shaughnessy, Martin Saggers, Surendiran Shanmugam and Jack Shantry, their match referees being Dean Cosker, Steve Davis, Will Smith, Peter Such and John Whitaker. The ECB is yet to publicly announce its full PUT, National Panel, or referee lists for the 2024 season.
05/04
03/04
Giles talks up a move away from New Rd
This week's name to conjure with: Wilfred John (Wilf) la Fontaine-Jackson, who's currently playing for Hampshire 2s. He's not new at 18, having played last season as well, but has a great name- a double barrelled with added twiddle.
02/04
Well Done Sam Northeast, real cricket proving it still has life in it.
ReplyDeleteLet's be honest a £5m windfall from selling off the Hundred is only buying time for some of the smaller clubs with financial difficulties, while expanding the Hundred makes their underlying finances worse as they have no ongoing benefit.
ReplyDelete80 NOT OUT
ReplyDeleteLighting costs = £150 per hour - thats about £1,000 per day . If its a dull four days then the costs are prohibitive when set against gate receipts ?
Can see their point of view .
Will other clubs follow suit ? Especially those who are struggling financially?
Lights appeared to be rationed last week at TB. Perhaps the ECB could help counties out with a L.E.D. Zeppelin that does the circuit on glum days. LED much more cost effective.
Delete80 NOT OUT .
ReplyDeleteI could be wrong but I thought I heard a figure of £250 an hour for the cost of TBs more comorehensive and powerful lights . That is a lot of money for any County
RIP to the great Deadly.
ReplyDeleteWith the Kookaburra having a much less pronounced seam on it, I believe after about 20 overs or so it stops seaming but in Australia 🇦🇺 the wickets are much harder so the faster merchants and spinners at least get bounce. This is not the case on our wickets to anything like the same degree at most Counties especially in April May and September
ReplyDeleteIt’s certainly been different. We’ve often had matches where 180 is par first up and someone crashing a quick fire 70 gets you to a match winning score of 220 and the games over in 2 and a half days on our seamer friendly pitches. I’ve never thought that will produce many top quality Test cricketers but it would be a huge call to play all 14 rounds with it
It’s been impressive to watch us still have a mini-collapse(as Ant Botha described it) twice over amongst the majority of drawn games and if we had got anything like the full 96 in last Monday all three results would have been possible still
Reg. the sad news of ‘Deadly’ Derek - these are the earliest memories I have of watching him on the Beeb, along with Amiss, Knotty & Co
Wasn’t he a demon bowler, after it had rained playing on uncovered wickets back then ?
I can understand the rationale to a degree, in encouraging the selection of spin bowlers and to make the seam bowlers search for that extra yard of pace.However, as the good doctor correctly points out, apart from the Oval , and occasionally at Old Trafford and Trent Bridge, the majority of English wickets, are low ,slow affairs, nothing like those down under.There is an argument I suppose, that a bowler with any type of cricket ball, will exploit poor footwork or poor defence in a batsman, and there are plenty of those currently on the circuit.
ReplyDeleteOne thing for sure, if the Kookaburra ball becomes a permanent fixture in County Cricket, then the traditional English medium fast bowler,
will increasingly become a redundant item.
80 NOT OUT
ReplyDeleteFlogging off the HINDRED is probably already a done deal . Money talks . And big money talks even more loudly . The 🥕 carrot dangling in front of the 18 County Chairmen is going to be almost impossible to turn down .It would appear to be a financial life belt that may save one or two Counties from floundering and possibly going under . The current maths for some Clubs simply don’t add up to viability .
Members up and down the Country can protest all they like but I fear 😰 to no avail.Behind closed doors , and furtive telephone conversations I reckon the ECB have this proposed deal already in the bag .
If the promised pot of gold can help the four day game to survive plus pay for various overdue ground improvements etc etc many will consider the sell off a price worth paying !?
Rich
ReplyDeleteSorry about that.
ReplyDeleteAlways convinced that this late decision to be Notts member this year, would be my last as a member of any cricket club. That pretty much confirmed, like many the events and the way the while thing is going, was what I feared and convinced was decided years ago.
From a good source, I heard it went like this:
ReplyDeleteECB: Hey Notts if you want to host Test matches in the future you have to enlarge your pavilion ASAP, you currently don't even have an accessible transgender prayer room with dimmable lighting and this is 2023
NCCC: No problem we'll draw up plans with an architect
ECB: The plans look lovely, now get on with building it, and no we aren't giving you the money to do it we're almost into 2024 already
NCCC: Raising that kind of money might take longer than you want ECB
ECB: You need to get on with building your new pavilion or you'll lose your test ground status, oh and BTW if you sell some of your stake in our lovely competition, you know the one, you could easily raise enough money, you just have to think about yourselves as being Trent Bridge now and not NCCC anymore and forget about those parochial supporters and members.
TB: Sounds like a plan, OK ECB, we just need you to time your decision making and deadlines so that we don't have to talk to those Luddite members, they know who we are and some of them used to like us and will they be awfully disappointed with us, we can't have any pesky forum or EGMs to contend with.
ECB: Not a problem, we'll factor in a window into the fixtures early season when your ground isn't having matches for three weeks and drop a deadline in there leaving no time for any consultation. Happy? You could always drop in a drone show to make the place look busy.
TB: Oh yes thank you, you're so great and mighty ECB and it doesn't sound like blackmail at all.
ECB: Play it right and we all could get very rich and our egos can be as big as ... your new pavilion
TB: So what happened to growing the game and our new audience?
ECB: Don't tell anyone this but, there is no new audience, just the same drunkards but more pissed and raising the profile of women's cricket makes it look like growth when it's just the same cricket, but it's cricket on TV so it's more visible; throw in a few catchy team names and the media are fooled. Your job is to just play along and build-in extra changing facilities (and that accessible transgender prayer room) and the odd green initiative and mention the word "families" a few times in any interactions with members. And make sure your players are driving massive electric vehicles too.
TB: It's all in the submitted plans.
ECB: So we're all good to go, see you 9th of May 2024.
80NOT OUT
ReplyDeleteWell done Dixon Gates , humour combined with well thought out logical reasoning .Although it’s a spoof posting I bet there is more than an element of truth in it .
The simple fact is that the HINDRED just cannot be allowed to fail - come what may . Reputations at the ECB depend on it .The necessary “ new” improved all singing all dancing Pavilion will cost a pretty penny and a possible £8-£10 million plus via a Hindred fire sale may well appeal !?
Members were sent an email on Friday 15th December 2023, entitled "Member Update".
ReplyDeleteAn extract: "We will provide any meaningful updates throughout the first quarter of next year – and once we receive proposals, we will share them with you and then undertake a formal consultation process. That process will include a variety of options to ensure you can all engage with us via your preferred method, and will include written briefings, face-to-face meetings and online options via Zoom. Irrespective of what you may read or hear, please be reassured that we will keep you fully updated in the months ahead."
Has anyone received ANYTHING in the way of communication from the club about this since?
Not a sausage.
DeleteAren't we into the 2nd quarter now.
Delete80 NOT OUT
ReplyDeleteThe apparent silence seems deafening!
Consultation is a word that the Notts ccc top table rarely use
They obviously know best ?
( or think they do)
The jumped up estate agent chairman is out of his depth. He does not have a clue /he is just a puppet of the ceo and her grand schemes.
ReplyDeleteBut you all still go? Withdraw your memberships /stop paying at the gate. Or just go with the flow. This is not the Notts ccc I grew up supporting.
ReplyDelete80 NOT OUT
ReplyDeleteNO ANONYMOUS .
I don’t think they all pay and go as before. I stand to be corrected but I seem to recollect the Notts CCC Membership was about 7,500 until quite recently .Someone connected to Notts told me recently the current Membership is now about 4,000..
Can anyone confirm these figures?If the lower figure is correct is it a general reflection of the result of Notts Pravda non information service ?
Why have the Notts Top Table become so reclusive? What are they trying to hide? Do Members views have any relevance or clout today ?
The issue with the top table is most have never played the game & are not really interested in cricket most have never been members & are only interested in there own status' it would be good to see a table to show who comes to see Notts home & away personally I would think not many
ReplyDeleteRegarding membership there are different
Categories so there are full membership as well as outlaws membership & others so yes would be interesting to see the break down
Who are calling the top table? As far as I'm aware the TT are Chair + CEO + DoC + Head coach.
DeleteI really don't mean any disrespect to club management, but I wonder whether they are cut out for negotiating equity deals.
ReplyDeleteThe track record isn't great. I found it astonishing that restaurant no-ball was built and then effectively abandoned. With no accountability!
And now there appears to be no communication or accountability over the hundred. Not a good sign!
There doesn't appear to be any rush to consult with the membership. In their defence, as there's a break in cricket for 10-12 days, perhaps they've booked a holiday which they don't want to cancel.
Delete80 NOT OUT
ReplyDeleteI FEAR THE WORST!
You can just see the way the game of cricket is going . Fragmented and money based and everyone chasing their personal pot of gold . Except the long suffering Members and spectators. Those of us who are long in the tooth have witnessed the best days of cricket.. A new era beckons !
80 NOT OUT
ReplyDeleteRESTAURANT NO 🥎 BALL ! A good description . Now a white elephant and a drain on finance and resources . Perhaps it may become the new Committee Room pending improvements/ rebuild/ partial demolition of the existing Pavilion ?
The top table waiting for a big pay day from the sale of the 100 as being a founding partner not wanting to get into any conversation with members full stop
ReplyDeleteUntil deal is done' if not already done' in my opinion the moneys should go into the club coffers not individuals pockets for facilitating this process
What club? Notts? There a after thought. All 100 and international cricket venue.
ReplyDeleteWhy have the ECB only given a two-week deadline?
DeleteDoes it breach any club statutes for counties NOT to put such an important decision to a binding members vote?
Has the flat level of the ECB’s payment to counties for talent creation (widely credited, along with rising costs, as the crucial factor in why finances have bitten now) been influenced by:
Expenditure on the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named
Expenditure on central contracts
The value of the unilateral TV deal with Sky
Why are regulations not being put in place to outlaw personal profiteering by county officials from the sale of franchises in you-know-what or counties?
Do the ECB believe overseas ownership will look after the interests of English cricket? Why are there no regulations regarding this too?