FORMER Worcestershire chief executive David Leatherdale has started work as CEO of the Professional Cricketers Association (PCA).
In the second part of his interview, he looks at the challenges that lie ahead in changing times for cricket.
What was the attraction of your new role at the PCA?
Having been at one county for 30 years, player and non-player, making the change is difficult. Does it feel about the right time in my life? I’m 48, the PCA have supported me to have the opportunity to work for the whole game.
It covers every single county, it covers the England set-up, it covers the Benevolent Trust who have supported players from this club in my times as chief executive.
With where the game is at domestically and globally, there are obviously a lot of changes going on.
You only have to see 81,000 people sat in the Melbourne Cricket Ground for a domestic T20 game and only 10,000 a week later watching Australia-New Zealand in a Test match to appreciate the game is not the same as it was 10 years ago.
The balance is understanding that and the history of cricket, which is what we all love.
Worcestershire has just had its 150th Anniversary celebrations. But the challenges are that we are part of that lovely cog of cricket in the global game. Worcestershire is one of 18 counties, the 18 counties are part of the ECB from an England perspective and recreational perspective.
But that is also one part of what the whole game looks like and each part of that is in a very different place.
T20 has had a yo-yo existence but in the last two or three years, with what we’ve seen what is happening around the world, it’s starting to make people ask questions of what the game should look like in this country.
Do you think for the forseeable future there will be a place for the four day game?
Absolutely. In this country, we love four-day cricket, it’s got that history. The other balance is people say we’ve always had four-day cricket.
But we’ve also had three-day cricket and two-day cricket and just over 50 years ago, we didn’t have one-day cricket.
We’ve had 60, 55, 50, 45, 40 overs cricket, we’ve had every possible sort. It’s been brought in to develop the game but four-day cricket has now been part of that set-up for quite some time. The T20 is only 10 years old.
You think of Test matches, when England, Australia and India are playing in Test matches and they are well supported but it is pretty common knowledge that is not necessarily the case if, for example, New Zealand are playing South Africa when they are filling stadiums for T20 matches and not Tests.
There will always be a love of Test cricket, the pinnacle of the game scenario.
What Test cricket looks like in five-10 years time, is it as it is now…..possibly not.
How that operates when you are talking about floodlit cricket in Adelaide, playing with pink balls to try and reinvigorate it, that is just one option that is being put on the table.
With Test match and four-day cricket, what that looks like in the next five to 10 years is probably the question everyone is trying to answer at the moment.
I suspect promotion and relegation and only eight teams in the top division of the Championship won’t go down very well with members. What is your view on that?
I was going to say there are two schools of thought on that but it is probably about 15 schools of thought on what works and what doesn’t work.
Starting with the two divisions of nine-nine, promotion-relegation personally I think has worked well. It is not everyone’s view. It creates the sort of competition you want.
I know going into 2017 your two down, one up scenario for a year in order to create the 8-10 and then the plan is two up, two down for 2018…there should still hopefully be that migration from top to bottom.
As far as the 8-10 split, it frees up days of cricket which I agree with.
Members will lose one four-day game at home but looking at the structure for 2017, there is distinct likelihood that many of these games will be played on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday in the early part of the season.
Members are concerned that you won’t play everyone now in the County Championship twice?
If you also go back to many years ago, we played 22 matches – 16 three-day games and six four-day games. One of the questions is, yes, how do you make 14 games fit with 10 teams and you are going to have to play some teams twice and some once.
The balance over a period of time is you are going to play sides and the strong will still rise to the top in that sort of scenario. It isn’t perfect, don’t get me wrong, but the balance is you are trying to look after three formats of the game.
If you really wanted to make it symmetrical, and the members would probably kick up even more of a stink, then you’d have to go into three divisions of six and only play 10 Championship matches.
We as a club at Worcestershire openly said we’d prefer to play 16 Championship matches and three or four of the other counties are in a similar boat but other counties don’t feel that way.
Things have moved on very quickly when you think where T20 was five years ago. We did four matches, six matches, five, matches, then eight matches, then we were back to seven matches.
We are constantly trying to find that balance with what works for people to watch it, the times they want to watch it, and the nights they want to watch it.
Visit www.wccc.co.uk for more from Leatherdale including the challenges ahead for the PCA
