Lancashire and Middlesex: How county cricket's fallen giants turned mutinous

Storm clouds gather over Old Trafford, home of Lancashire CCC Gareth Copley/Getty Images Share articleThe Athletic has launched a Cricket WhatsApp Channel. Click here to join. They are two of the biggest counties in English cricket, rich in tradition and success. But now the once mighty Lancashire and Middlesex languish in the second division of the County Championship amid accusations of poor management and blurred priorities. Such are the levels of discontent at their fortunes, two groups have formed of some of the most prominent players from each club’s distinguished history to call for change. Ahead of the second-flight meeting of the fallen giants at Old Trafford on Friday, The Athletic spoke to representatives of both to find out why they felt compelled to act. Paul Allott spells out the main reason why some of the biggest names from Lancashire’s glorious past have decided enough is enough at Old Trafford. “The board is not Lancashire through and through and doesn’t appear to understand what Lancashire cricket is all about,” says the former fast bowler turned Sky commentator and then Lancashire director of cricket. “We feel the business and commercial side has overtaken the importance of cricket. That’s not to say we don’t realise you need a solid business and commercial core, that’s quite obvious, but we are essentially saying: ‘Don’t forget why you’re there in the first place’. “You’re there because you’re a cricket club and a members’ club, and it should be run by the members for the members. “We have got together because we’re concerned about the way the club is being run. And because the board has suffered a number of resignations and now it doesn’t appear to have enough cricketing knowledge on it. Morale among staff is at rock bottom.” It was last year that Allott first joined forces with the likes of former captain and coach David Lloyd and other big playing names including Mike Atherton, Neil Fairbrother, Wasim Akram and Mike Watkinson, as well as two former chairs of the club in Bob Bennett and Michael Cairns, to see if they could make a difference. They believe a county with 26 major men’s domestic honours to their name — the last of them coming 11 years ago — while being ‘kings’ of limited-overs cricket throughout much of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, should still be a northern powerhouse with the advantage of playing at an iconic ground in Manchester, a thriving city, rather than a seemingly fading force. Their biggest gripe was the restriction at Lancashire whereby only two former employees of the club are allowed on the board at any one time, a rule the group say has led to a lack of cricketing knowledge at the very top. Lancashire respond that they are open to increasing this number to three and also has a cricket development committee. “All we want to do is help,” Allott, acting as spokesman for the group, tells The Athletic. “We’ve been dubbed revolutionary but we’re not that. Reactionary perhaps but not revolutionary. If we could talk, the club would see how we could become closer and take Lancashire forward to the place where it should be. But they are reluctant to do so.” Lancashire insist they are open to communicating with the group and all members. “Cricket is obviously a big part of this but it’s by no means the be all and end all of our worries,” adds Allott. “We’ve tried to keep personality out of it in the hope that we will be able to liaise with the board on a friendly and helpful basis, but it’s just not happening. “The rule restricting the presence of former employees — and that’s not just cricketers, it’s any employees — on the board is ridiculous and I believe no other county leaves themselves so short of knowledge of the club and its cricket. As it stands (the ex-Lancashire middle-order batter) John Abraham is on the board and (former West Indies captain and Lancashire stalwart) Clive Lloyd has been asked to be president and that’s it.” The situation was summed up for Allott by Lancashire’s recent decision to tell David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd, one of the best-known and most respected figures in the game, and a man steeped in Lancastrian tradition, he would not be considered for the board because he lacked the required skill-set. “I’m completely dismayed by this,” Lloyd told The Athletic. The Lancashire group, which also includes prominent supporters and one King’s Counsel (KC), did manage to force a special general meeting (SGM) to attempt to increase the number to four “in terms of a stepping stone to try to move things forward”, says Allott. But it was to no avail. “The club put their own SGM forward which had seven resolutions to change some of the constitution and rules which effectively would have limited the members’ authority and control over the club,” says Allott, who made 205 first-class appearances for Lancashire, taking 549 wickets, and played 13 Tests for England. “They were clouded in poorly crafted grammar and, at the SGM, their resolutions got shot down in flames. So they took them all off the table and adjourned the SGM because our KC pulled them apart. It was a highly unusual situation. “Then on the same day our SGM went forward but it was very frustrating. The club have a history of only putting their side of the story to the membership so they backed their resolutions with a considerable amount of information but all they did with ours was put our resolution out and refused to put any info out that supported it. “A number of votes were cast prior to the meeting and, consequently, the membership wasn’t aware of the reasoning behind our proposal. On the night we won 90 per cent of the vote but, thanks to the votes cast prior to the meeting, we got 63 per cent of the vote overall and failed by three per cent. “Unfortunately, we knew it was going to happen. We just weren’t allowed to put our side of the story. So we’ve got ourselves into a position where the club’s resolutions have been thrown out and ours was defeated by three per cent and we are still trying to talk to the board who refuse to come back and meet us. “I was at the SGM with David Lloyd, Neil Fairbrother and others and it was just embarrassing. The whole thing is a mess.” The problems at Lancashire, according to Allott, are clear as soon as you step into one of the most famous cricket grounds in the country. “You walk into the Old Trafford pavilion and there are elements of cricket, but the history and heritage of it and the club is not very well reflected at all,” says a man who first set foot in the ground aged 11 in the mid-1960s as a ‘junior subscriber’. “There’s been a piecemeal effort at naming a couple of stands after Clive Lloyd and Farokh Engineer, but every ground you walk into in the world reflects what has gone on there and ours doesn’t, either from a club or international point of view. “You have the (James) Anderson and (Brian) Statham Ends, but that’s about it and you can’t see the signage from more than 20 yards away. The whole thing is just so poor. The perception of how cricket is viewed is evident for all to see. It’s pushed into the background. “This year is the 70th anniversary of Jim Laker’s 19 wickets in a Test (for England against Australia at Old Trafford) which has never been equalled and that needs commemorating but I’m not sure it will be. Old Trafford has such a rich history of cricket from a county and international perspective and that needs to be reflected far more than it is.” There was change at Lancashire last week when chief executive Daniel Gidney announced he would be standing down at the end of the year after 14 years in the role. “This has been a big decision but I feel it is the right time to hand over the reins, leaving the club in a strong financial position to build on,” Gidney said in a statement. “The club is entering a new era of financial stability, providing a strong platform to drive our on-field ambitions forward, with continued significant investment in player recruitment, development and cricket infrastructure. I think the future is incredibly bright for the Red Rose.” Gidney’s departure is, say the Lancashire ‘rebels’, a step in the right direction but their fight goes on. They have now put in a vote of no confidence in the board in the shape of a proposal for another SGM. “We want to help but the club continue to ignore the membership and us as a group so we had no option,” adds Allott. “We do not believe the board has followed club rules and continues to fail to give both sides of the argument on key matters. The club have until May 25 to stage the SGM and we will see where we go from there.” When approached for comment by The Athletic, a Lancashire spokesperson said: “As a proud member-owned club, Lancashire Cricket welcomes the opinions and challenges of every single member and looks forward to our upcoming Annual General Meeting later this month. “We are committed to listening, responding and acting in the best interests of our diverse and broad range of members, players and staff who all make up Lancashire Cricket. Together we have the opportunity to shape a future for the Red Rose that we can all be proud of — one that honours our proud history and heritage while building a club fit for generations of boys and girls to come.” Mike Selvey paints a nightmare picture of the future of the county who once lit up the home of cricket in Lord’s. “Ours is a genuine existential crisis,” says the former Middlesex and England swing and seam bowler who went on to become president of his county after a long and distinguished stint as cricket correspondent of The Guardian. “There are many of us who believe that without change, in terms of its administration and cricket, the club will drift towards irrelevance. I can see a situation in 10 years’ time, maybe less, where Middlesex are playing minor counties cricket.” It is a stark assessment of a Middlesex team who, under the captaincy of Mike Brearley and then Mike Gatting, won the County Championship seven times in 18 seasons but who have now spent eight of the last nine years out of the top division. “Middlesex has a proud history, especially over the last 50 years since we won the Championship in 1976,” says Selvey, who spoke to The Athletic as joint spokesman with Gatting for the Middlesex group of former players and past presidents seeking change. “That kickstarted a run of success the club had not had since the 1940s. It went through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and again when they won the Championship 10 years ago, so this is not a county without history. “But since 2016 everything has gone downhill.” So much so that Middlesex’s issues are extensive. In 2023 the county were sanctioned by the ECB for financial mismanagement and put into special measures. Since then they became involved in a legal wrangle with their former chief executive Richard Goatley and then another with his successor Andrew Cornish, who has been suspended on full pay for six months while he is the subject of an investigation by the Cricket Regulator. Hence the intervention of the Middlesex group led by Selvey and former England captain Gatting which includes others like Mark Ramprakash, Desmond Haynes, John Emburey and Clive Radley, who released an open letter urging the membership to act. “Originally this was former presidents trying to do something and we wrote a letter to individual board members asking them a simple question — are you satisfied with the way cricket is being administered in this club? But nothing came from that,” says Selvey. “We continued to get lots of messages from angry past players saying: ‘What’s happening to our club?’ So we then wrote a letter to the chair (Richard Sykes) saying broadly you really need to think about your position because the club’s floundering. “All he did was send some sort of message to Mike Gatting. It’s easy to blame the CEO who’s suspended, but the cricket department has been working without any checks and balances. In the end, enough is enough so that’s why we’ve gone public with it. Not to provide a blueprint or manifesto for us. This was a call to the members saying: ‘If you want change, you’ve got to do something.’” That action, the Middlesex group hoped, would come at the county’s annual general meeting last month but, like Lancashire, they ran into frustration. “The AGM frankly was a disgrace,” says Selvey. “The chair filibustered it. The meeting started at 6pm and he talked about finance until 8pm, in particular trying to push through de-mutualisation which has got no chance of happening. Then a 10-minute break and we got onto cricket which Alan Coleman (director of cricket) took and said we should be able to get through this by 8.30pm. This is cricket! “Yes, the club have appointed a credible new coach in Peter Fulton. We could argue about whether he’s the right coach or whether Ottis Gibson should have been given it. People have different opinions on that and that’s fair enough, but Fulton is credible. “Yet just appointing a new coach won’t solve the structure of the club and won’t solve the pathway and academy. It won’t solve the fact that good players have left and have flourished elsewhere. This is not about the players at the club but those we have lost.” Those players are numerous. “Why did Martin Andersson go to Derbyshire and score four hundreds, including a double hundred this year?” asks Selvey, who made 213 first-class appearances for Middlesex and played in three Tests for England. “Why did John Simpson go to Sussex? He’s been one of our very few world-class cricketers over the last few years. Why did Steve Eskinazi go to Leicestershire? He was one of our best white-ball batters. Why is Nathan Sowter playing for Durham? He is as good a T20 wrist-spinner as any in the country. The list goes on.” The biggest problem, perhaps, for Middlesex is that they do not own their own ground and are tenants of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) at Lord’s, meaning they are reliant on the ECB for approximately 60 per cent of their funding. “The club has genuinely got no money and no assets,” adds Selvey. “Every other county has a big asset in their ground, but we don’t own ours. We haven’t got any debts but that is not helping getting money from the ECB from The Hundred sale. It’s getting messier and messier. “We’ve put a few noses out of joint with this, but I really don’t care. We will just have to see where we get with it. I don’t know what the future holds but I do fear the worst. It really hurts all of us. Genuinely so.” When approached for comment by The Athletic, Middlesex chair Richard Sykes said: “We are different to all the other counties because we don’t own our own ground. So one of our strategic challenges is needing a home away from home for when we can’t play at Lord’s. “It’s very important not just in the summer but also in the winter when players need better and more permanent training facilities. If we do that we’ll still play at Lord’s as much as we can, but it will improve our chances of improving our cricket and our cricketing staff. “We also need to continue strengthening our relationship with MCC because the closer relationship with them the better. This year, for the first time in many years, we are both motivated to get more people into Lord’s to watch Middlesex. Until this season it didn’t matter to us if we sold one ticket or thousands because MCC were paying us a fixed fee. That’s changed now. “We have received £2million ($2.7m) from the ECB of our share of The Hundred money but that is just to top up our reserves — we don’t have any debts and we don’t have a ground to spend the money on — and our financial stability is difficult because we have no real ability to generate revenue of our own. We are dependent on the ECB for between 60 and 70 per cent of our revenue. “We feel frustrated that performance isn’t what it was. But we recognise the need for external investment to enable us to invest in players and improve the cricketing performance which ultimately is what everyone wants. My main objective is to stabilise everything on and off the field.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms