This post is a review of the ECB accounts for the year to 31 January 2018.  I reviewed the ECB accounts for the period to 31 January 2017 here . I won't rehash my comments about the lack of transparency in the accounts, but will say that each year the ECB provides less information to its members and people with a strange interest in cricketing finances. I have already covered the disclosure in the accounts that a £2.5m payment was made to Glamorgan for not staging test matches despite statements to the contrary by ECB Chairman Colin Graves. For the second year in a row the ECB accounts show a large loss.  Income increased from £119m to £125m, but with expenditure of £156m, largely unchanged from 2017, there was a 2018 deficit of £30m. At first sight the numbers look odd as 2017 was expected to be a year of unusually high expenditure due to one off payments to the First Class Counties and note 20 the 2018 accounts discloses payments made to the First Class Coun...

Just finished reading Jonathan Trott's autobiography,   Unguarded .  This post is partially a review of the book but more my recollections of Trotty, most of which come from first class not international cricket, appropriate given Trott played 281 1st class matches of which 52 were tests. So when did I first see Jonathan Trott?  I think it must have been Chelmsford in 2003, right at the end of his first full season with Warwickshire.  The cricket world wasn't that different then compared to now, the two division county championship and 20/20 were both up and running.  What do I remember about him? There was quite a lot of hair and his driving down the ground was impressive,  the ball leapt off his bat faster than it should.  I had him marked down as talented but impermanent. It was an impression reinforced when I saw him at Lord's the following June.  The 2004 Warwickshire side were a tough team to play, they didn't lose a game in the...

Warwickshire recently released its accounts for the year to 30 September 2018.  I commented on the accounts for the year to 30 September 2017  here  and this post looks at the 2018 accounts in more detail. On the face of it things are grim.  Although the club tries to focus attention on something called "operating EBITDA", the accounts show a loss of £1.5m for the year, even worse than 2017 when the county lost £0.9m.  The year on year losses take a toll on the financial condition and the Balance Sheet shows the club has liabilities £2.5m in excess of its assets. The loss for the period is maybe not quite as bad as you would think as it includes £1.5m of depreciation which is effectively an accounting measure of the cost of replacing the existing stands etc.(See my previous post if you want to read about depreciation.)  Of course we won't have to do this for years to come and you might argue that a more accurate figure would replace the depreciatio...

I have gone back to 2015 and replicated my 2018 analysis  of the impact of winning the toss on the first 40 county championship games of the season.  Comparing the two years it is remarkable how similar they are.  A few tables illustrate the point. Win the toss outcomes '15 '18 Win 14 13 Lose 11 13 Draw 15 12 I've occasionally shrugged off defeats for my county, Warwickshire, because "once we lost the toss we lost the game" but that is very rarely true. Batting first though seems to provide a (very slight) advantage. Batting first outcomes '15 '18 Win 14 14 Lose 11 12 Draw 15 12 Conversely winning the toss and choosing to bowl doesn't give the bowling team much, if any, of an advantage. Win the toss and bowl / elect to bowl '15 '18 Win 8 8 Lose 8 9 Draw 11 8 There's a good post on By the sightscreen which suggests perhaps a similar pattern in 20:20.  The toss doesn't matter much but batting first ...

For the last three seasons in the county championship the away side can opt to bowl first without there being a toss.  If the away side doesn't take that option there is a toss in the usual way. I thought it would be interesting to see what impact this rule had both on the decisions made by captains and the results of the games.  This is the first of two posts on this topic and covers the first 40 games of the 2018 season (i.e. up to the round of matches ending 14th May.) In this period two games were abandoned without a ball being bowled.  Of the other 38, on 24 occasions the away side took the option of bowling first.  But not with a notable degree of success.  In nine of those gains the side sent in to bat won.  The tactic of bowling first was successful on 7 occasions with 8 draws. Of the 14 games where the was a toss the side winning the toss chose to bat first on 13 occasions.  Five of those bat first decisions resulted in a win, wit...

The  ECB accounts  for the period to 31 January 2018 disclose the payments made to Glamorgan  not to stage test matches. This post compares these statements with subsequent comments on the payments by ECB chairman Colin Graves: The Time line  11th April 2018 the ECB's accounts include the following statement: "The group's administrative expenditure at £132.8m remained broadly level with that of the prior year at £137.2m reflecting the continued high level of distributions made to the First Class County network and relatively flat central expenditure.  I ncluded in this expenditure was a payment of £2.5m to Glamorgan County Cricket Club in consideration for giving up the right to apply to host Test match cricket in the future ." The statement is included in the strategic report to the accounts signed by CJ Graves ECB Chairman. 14 May 2018 The Guardian and Cricinfo report Colin Graves, when questioned about payments to Glamorgan saying : " “No ...

Colin Graves did an interview with the BBC on the 14th May.  As well as blethering on about the 100 he said something interesting about the subject of payments to Glamorgan  for not bidding for test matches . " Graves said: “No payments have been made to counties at all, full stop. I floated an idea talking to four or five county chairmen, that would need to be agreed by the board to go any further. No payments have been made. No payments have been promised. End of conversation.” [Quote taken from the  Guardian ] This is a bit embarrassing for me.  In my previous post on Glamorgan I wrote :  " Glamorgan have accounted for the full £2.5m non - staging payments as income (see page 8 of the accounts).This would only be appropriate if they were assured the payment would be made.   And although the years covered by the payments are 2020  - 2024 it seems Glamorgan have already  received some of the cash.  It's only I guess but I w...