Durham is the baby of the 18 first class counties , admitted to the County Championship in 1992. Before Durham came Glamorgan who gained first class status in 1921. Northamptonshire (1905) were the only other county to join the championship in the twentieth century, all of the other counties were playing in the county championship prior to 1900.
English domestic cricket is a remarkably stable affair with no county having become insolvent or gone into administration. Remarkably this stability has been achieved against a background of a hundred years plus of financial crisis. Pictures of crowds flocking to Lord's in the aftermath of World War Two are misleading. As I found out whilst researching my book A War To The Knife small crowds, unbalanced budgets and reliance on distributions from Test cricket have long been a fact of life for many counties.
The 1933 spring edition of The Cricketer commented: “It is satisfactory to find that in spite
of adverse rumours first from one county and again from another, the prospect
of a share in the surplus for the Australian tour during the winter coupled
with 1934 in view, makes the financial position very much easier than it was.”
Which raises the question of what is the explanation for the apparent contradiction of a state of continuing, unchanging crisis?
I think there are three factors, often overlooked, which have contributed to the stability of county cricket . Firstly there has never been relegation from the county championship (although of course from 2000 it is possible to be relegated from division 1 to division 2). Therefore counties don't have the risk that a run of bad form could see them lose first class status and, crucially, the right to MCC / ECB distributions from international cricket.
Secondly the counties are generally quite small businesses if one does fall into financial difficulties it can be pulled out of the mire, perhaps by its own members (Northamptonshire's recent restructuring is a good example)
Or perhaps a local council or the ECB.
Finally the counties have generally rigged the labour market for cricketers to their own benefit and at the cost of the players. In the pre - war period the residency qualification prevented cricketers from moving between counties and helped to keep wages down, now the control is a more brazen salary cap.
I'm in two minds about the salary cap: I can see the point that cricket in the UK is dependent on revenue from international games and that development will suffer if those revenues are used up in a zero sum struggle between the counties to get the best non - international players. That said, playing sport is, in some ways, a tough way to earn a living, many young people and their parents put in hours of work in trying to establish themselves as professionals but for most the effort will end in disappointment. There are also concerns counties are abusing the power they have over players who are the fringe of first team squads with unapproved contracts and payments at less than the minimum wage. So it seems unfair that those players who are at the top level of county cricket but not quite good enough to obtain a central England contract are paid, not what they are worth, but what their employers think they should earn.
It is interesting to look at the vexed issue of salary caps against amounts paid to county chief executives, other senior administrators and directors of cricket. For a long time chief executive pay in county cricket was opaque as most counties are "bona fide co - operative societies" and are not subject to those sections of the Companies Act which require disclosure of directors' earnings. However, there is now a chink in the curtain as UK financial reporting standards require the disclosure of payments to related parties, which includes Key Management Personnel ("KMP"). The new disclosure gives an indication of how much senior administrators and directors of cricket are earning but only an indication. Although the total paid to KMP has to be disclosed there is no requirement to break this down by individual or even to disclose the numbers of KMP. Additionally there is no proper definition of which employees are KMP, all directors are included but it is possible for non - directors to be KMP.
This makes it very hard to compare how much counties spend on KMP. County A might disclose payments of £100,000 to KMP whilst the figure for county B is £200,000. That might indicate the executives have run amok at County B, but equally it could be because county B treats roles as KMP that are not KMP in county A. Still it's worthwhile to look at the figures as disclosed by each of the counties. Middlesex are left out of the table as they continue to fail to file accounts but Hampshire are, for once, included. Gloucester and Worcester don't seem to have made the required disclosure.
| 2017 / 2018 | 2016 / 2017 | Increase / Decrease | Number of KMP | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Derbyshire | 120,191 | 107,400 | 11.91% | ||||
| Durham | 148,847 | 148,847 | 0.00% | ||||
| Essex | 473,652 | 447,644 | 5.81% | ||||
| Glamorgan | 363,908 | 399,117 | -8.82% | ||||
| Gloucester | NA | NA | NA | ||||
| Hampshire | 523,405 | 381,972 | 37.03% | ||||
| Kent | 338,578 | 300,860 | 12.54% | ||||
| Lancashire | 779,142 | 850,370 | -8.38% | ||||
| Leicestershire | 131,320 | 126,847 | 3.53% | 1? | |||
| Northamptonshire | 282,174 | 274,623 | 2.75% | ||||
| Nottinghamshire | 444,961 | 428,714 | 3.79% | ||||
| Somerset | 165,090 | 148,702 | 11.02% | ||||
| Sussex | 469,652 | 541,685 | -13.30% | ||||
| Surrey | 996,000 | 896,000 | 11.16% | 5 | |||
| Warwicksire | 629,871 | 631,911 | -0.32% | 4 | |||
| Worcestershire | NA | NA | NA | ||||
| Yorkshire | 654,025 | 841,771 | -22.30% | 4 | |||
| 6,520,816 | 6,526,463 |
I must admit before I produced this analysis I did wonder if there was an acceleration in the amount directors of cricket and administrators were being paid. But there isn't consistent evidence of this, yes some counties have seen a sharp rise KMP payments (hello Hampshire) but others have shown decreases and of course the issue about who are KMP makes year on year comparisons difficult. So how, as county members, do we know if KMP remuneration is good value for money? Is improving disclosure the answer?
A county with good disclosure is Warwickshire. The county has an executive management team of (four white male) KMP who are named in the accounts and the related party disclosure note details that payments of £629k were made to those four individuals. Accordingly, the member knows how many KMP there are, can compare numbers year on year and has confidence that the definition of KMP matches the way the county is run.
But although disclosure being desireable is an axiom of neo - liberalism its practical benefits are sometimes hard to discern and at times disclosure is actively harmful. A good example is the pay of directors of FTSE 100 companies. Their remuneration is extensively disclosed, the annual accounts of a FTSE company will have pages of information on the directors' pay. But pay for FTSE 100 executives has hardly been distinguished by moderation. Chief executives differ in how much value they bring to an organisation but all of them are highly confident in their own abilities and are canny manipulators of non - executives . Each chief executive is able to convince his (or occasionally her) board that he is an outstanding individual who needs to be paid more than the average for the role. Of course its impossible for all FTSE 100 chief executives to earn more than the average for a FTSE 100 chief executive and the result is feeding time at the zoo.
Perhaps the best way for cricket to ensure KMP pay doesn't get out of hand would be a salary cap for directors of cricket and chief executives. After all if the cap fits for cricket playing employees, why not for the individuals who manage those players and take care of administration?
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