Michael Atherton, Durham article



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From the opening two rounds of the County Championship, there are signs of a good news story emerging. Having had the better of a draw against Nottinghamshire, Durham then outplayed the champions Essex at Chelmsford for long periods before stumbling at the final hurdle. It is very early days, of course, but a sense of renewal and optimism permeates England’s most northern county again.

It is almost five years since one of the most swingeing punishments in any sport was handed down to Durham. In return for a financial bailout at the end of the 2016 season, the club were relegated, docked 48 points in the following year’s championship, plus other penalties, and told that they had to lower their salary cap by 40 per cent for three years, which led to the loss of a raft of quality players. It was a blow from which some clubs might not have recovered.


Character, spirit and resilience are abundant qualities in the North East, though, and are in ready supply in the chairman of the club, Sir Ian Botham. It was Botham who, over a few bottles of pinot noir in Sydney, persuaded Tim Bostock to give up a banking career in Australia and return home to take up the chief executive’s position three years ago, a move Bostock has not regretted, despite the challenges.
“He’s a very persuasive man, isn’t he?” Bostock, the 59-year-old former Cheshire batsman, says of his chairman. “I was a bit taken aback by the financial situation when I got here but he’s very loyal and will walk over broken glass for you if you get his confidence and trust and he’s been unbelievably brilliant to work with.”
The first job was to try to repair relations between Durham and the ECB, which were clearly difficult. “There was undoubtedly some lingering resentment and anger among our supporters and staff,” he says. “I felt we had no choice but to try to rebuild that relationship because we were going to need their support through some sticky periods. That was critical.”

“And while there are some diehards here who won’t forget, I’d like to think that the majority have seen that the ECB want us to succeed and that, strategically, the North East is very important to them. The ECB have been incredibly supportive to us in the last two years in all kinds of ways.”
One of those ways, for example, was allowing Durham to repay personal loans guaranteed by directors (money, no doubt, these directors did not expect to see again) before the debt owed to the ECB, as the club worked to repay their dues and put themselves on sounder financial footing. The last published accounts from the 2019 season showed a profit of £193,000 set against a loss the previous year of £1.1 million, a positive turn of events that has continued under Covid.
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Bostock returned home from Australia to become Durham’s chief executive
DURHAM CCC/TWITTER
This year’s accounts have not yet been published but will show a profit of about £350,000 with debt reduced by a further £1.3 million, down to about £5.2 million. A chunk of it is owed to Durham county council, which has been supportive and flexible in Covid, and that debt is being paid back at a rate of about £50,000 a month and should be cleared by 2024, two years ahead of schedule.
The next stage of the plan is to try to make the club more financially sustainable and less reliant on ECB revenues, which account for about 60 to 70 per cent of the club’s income. Bostock wants to reduce that to 40 per cent. To that end, a 130-room hotel project is central, with the council again the driving force behind a £22 million development, which has been in gestation since 2008 and delayed further by Covid but is expected to be signed off soon.

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One of the benefits of Covid — if it can be termed that way — is to have redefined the project. A 500-seat conference centre was originally planned to go alongside the hotel, but is now considered an unwise investment. Instead, funds will be spent on redesigning the pavilion and corporate hospitality spaces, providing conference facilities there as well as remote, flexible office space to local businesses.
Had Durham begun this project pre-Covid it might have finished them off as a business, as they would have been hammered — as Surrey, Lancashire, Warwickshire and others have been — with high fixed costs, a much bigger payroll to service and no revenues. Now, a post-Covid environment means the government are keen to invest in its “red wall” constituencies, and there is a hope that the club can ride the wave and contribute to a renaissance in the area, alongside the Teesside Freeport and Amazon, which has invested in nearby Sunderland.

Like all clubs with big stadiums, Durham have no choice but to try to diversify away from cricket, given the high costs of running a stadium and the limited number of days of international cricket. The Emirates Riverside is no longer a Test venue, which Bostock is comfortable with. Durham have positioned themselves as a one-day venue and will try to sell out the 50-over and/or T20 international cricket they will be granted each year, in the high-summer months.
Having been encouraged by the ECB to become an international venue, Durham then found themselves having to bid for lossmaking Tests — one of the reasons for their financial plight in the first place. That bidding process no longer exists. Positioning themselves as a limited-overs venue and trying to sell out some choice fixtures seems a route to a more sustainable future, if non-cricketing revenues can be increased too.
The strapline that everyone at the club is working towards is project “2024”, a five-year plan instigated in 2019. The first “2” stands for a planned reinvestment of £2 million into cricket in the community; “0” stands for zero debt at the end of the period; the second “2” is for two trophies to be won; and the “4” stands for four England players to be produced, beyond the present stars, Mark Wood and Ben Stokes.
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Stokes and Wood’s status as elite cricketers has inspired youngsters in the North East, Bostock believes
MI NEWS AND SPORT/ALAMY LIVE NEWS
“It’s a buzzword but it catches two things in one,” Bostock says. “It makes it very clear that we’ve got to get ourselves in a strong, sustainable financial position and we must strive to get ourselves to being back to a top team again. And part of our raison d’être here is to produce really good England players, which we’ve managed to do over the last ten or twelve years.”
Local players have begun to return “home” again, which is a sign of progress and confidence in the club. Scott Borthwick, the club captain, returned this season from Surrey; Paul Coughlin and Ben Raine before that from Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire respectively. Early performances have been encouraging and there are high hopes for Brydon Carse, 25, and a maturing Jack Burnham, 24, among others.

The aim is for players to benefit from some fresh, outside eyes — the club’s director of cricket is Marcus North, the former Australia batsman, and the head coach is James Franklin, the former New Zealand all-rounder — without losing the strong thread of local flavour and culture in their coaching ranks, provided by stalwarts like Alan Walker and Neil Killeen.
Bostock says his club’s under-15 and under-17 teams are in great shape, and thinks that is partly down to these teenagers being engaged by the emergence of Stokes as a world-class talent, some six years ago. “We’ve got an awful lot of confidence that the 15s and 17s are real indicators of how strong we are going to be in five or six years’ time. We’ve got some real talent coming through, which feeds back to the reason why the North East is so strategically important because we do have a strong track record of producing good international players for England.”
That is another reason why Durham retain an important strategic position for English cricket. They are not just the most northerly outpost but also a club who are fuelled by very different ingredients from most southern counties, who rely heavily on links with private schools. Durham’s strength is in their club system and their playing staff will have more state-school representatives than most, and more that have been fashioned in club cricket rather than the schools system.
In that sense, there is more of a distinctive flavour to be found in Durham cricket than most counties. They have a real sense of who they are and whom they represent. It would have been a tragic loss to the game had Durham gone under and any revitalisation can only be good for the English game. For the North, summer is coming.



Cricket
 
leecoo said:
He normally doesn't have a good word to say about durham so will be interesting to read, always seems ready with a dig or two
Click to expand...
This, I recall he wasn’t too sympathetic when we were demoted. Whilst the majority of journalists were writing in support of Durham, he, at the very best, sat on the fence.
Steak Pie said:
Sounds like the club aren't going to pursue Test cricket, that's a real shame.
Click to expand...
It is, but if they deem T20 and ODI’s more lucrative then that would make sense.
Parkside said:
Full content
From the opening two rounds of the County Championship, there are signs of a good news story emerging. Having had the better of a draw against Nottinghamshire, Durham then outplayed the champions Essex at Chelmsford for long periods before stumbling at the final hurdle. It is very early days, of course, but a sense of renewal and optimism permeates England’s most northern county again.

It is almost five years since one of the most swingeing punishments in any sport was handed down to Durham. In return for a financial bailout at the end of the 2016 season, the club were relegated, docked 48 points in the following year’s championship, plus other penalties, and told that they had to lower their salary cap by 40 per cent for three years, which led to the loss of a raft of quality players. It was a blow from which some clubs might not have recovered.


Character, spirit and resilience are abundant qualities in the North East, though, and are in ready supply in the chairman of the club, Sir Ian Botham. It was Botham who, over a few bottles of pinot noir in Sydney, persuaded Tim Bostock to give up a banking career in Australia and return home to take up the chief executive’s position three years ago, a move Bostock has not regretted, despite the challenges.
“He’s a very persuasive man, isn’t he?” Bostock, the 59-year-old former Cheshire batsman, says of his chairman. “I was a bit taken aback by the financial situation when I got here but he’s very loyal and will walk over broken glass for you if you get his confidence and trust and he’s been unbelievably brilliant to work with.”
The first job was to try to repair relations between Durham and the ECB, which were clearly difficult. “There was undoubtedly some lingering resentment and anger among our supporters and staff,” he says. “I felt we had no choice but to try to rebuild that relationship because we were going to need their support through some sticky periods. That was critical.”

“And while there are some diehards here who won’t forget, I’d like to think that the majority have seen that the ECB want us to succeed and that, strategically, the North East is very important to them. The ECB have been incredibly supportive to us in the last two years in all kinds of ways.”
One of those ways, for example, was allowing Durham to repay personal loans guaranteed by directors (money, no doubt, these directors did not expect to see again) before the debt owed to the ECB, as the club worked to repay their dues and put themselves on sounder financial footing. The last published accounts from the 2019 season showed a profit of £193,000 set against a loss the previous year of £1.1 million, a positive turn of events that has continued under Covid.
Logon or register to see this image

Bostock returned home from Australia to become Durham’s chief executive
DURHAM CCC/TWITTER
This year’s accounts have not yet been published but will show a profit of about £350,000 with debt reduced by a further £1.3 million, down to about £5.2 million. A chunk of it is owed to Durham county council, which has been supportive and flexible in Covid, and that debt is being paid back at a rate of about £50,000 a month and should be cleared by 2024, two years ahead of schedule.
The next stage of the plan is to try to make the club more financially sustainable and less reliant on ECB revenues, which account for about 60 to 70 per cent of the club’s income. Bostock wants to reduce that to 40 per cent. To that end, a 130-room hotel project is central, with the council again the driving force behind a £22 million development, which has been in gestation since 2008 and delayed further by Covid but is expected to be signed off soon.

SPONSORED​



One of the benefits of Covid — if it can be termed that way — is to have redefined the project. A 500-seat conference centre was originally planned to go alongside the hotel, but is now considered an unwise investment. Instead, funds will be spent on redesigning the pavilion and corporate hospitality spaces, providing conference facilities there as well as remote, flexible office space to local businesses.
Had Durham begun this project pre-Covid it might have finished them off as a business, as they would have been hammered — as Surrey, Lancashire, Warwickshire and others have been — with high fixed costs, a much bigger payroll to service and no revenues. Now, a post-Covid environment means the government are keen to invest in its “red wall” constituencies, and there is a hope that the club can ride the wave and contribute to a renaissance in the area, alongside the Teesside Freeport and Amazon, which has invested in nearby Sunderland.

Like all clubs with big stadiums, Durham have no choice but to try to diversify away from cricket, given the high costs of running a stadium and the limited number of days of international cricket. The Emirates Riverside is no longer a Test venue, which Bostock is comfortable with. Durham have positioned themselves as a one-day venue and will try to sell out the 50-over and/or T20 international cricket they will be granted each year, in the high-summer months.
Having been encouraged by the ECB to become an international venue, Durham then found themselves having to bid for lossmaking Tests — one of the reasons for their financial plight in the first place. That bidding process no longer exists. Positioning themselves as a limited-overs venue and trying to sell out some choice fixtures seems a route to a more sustainable future, if non-cricketing revenues can be increased too.
The strapline that everyone at the club is working towards is project “2024”, a five-year plan instigated in 2019. The first “2” stands for a planned reinvestment of £2 million into cricket in the community; “0” stands for zero debt at the end of the period; the second “2” is for two trophies to be won; and the “4” stands for four England players to be produced, beyond the present stars, Mark Wood and Ben Stokes.
Logon or register to see this image

Stokes and Wood’s status as elite cricketers has inspired youngsters in the North East, Bostock believes
MI NEWS AND SPORT/ALAMY LIVE NEWS
“It’s a buzzword but it catches two things in one,” Bostock says. “It makes it very clear that we’ve got to get ourselves in a strong, sustainable financial position and we must strive to get ourselves to being back to a top team again. And part of our raison d’être here is to produce really good England players, which we’ve managed to do
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing, fantastic article even if we knew most of it anyway from the article in The Cricketer a fortnight ago. It’s a pity too that Athers hasn’t quite got his geography right with either the Amazon factory or the ‘red wall’, but it was a minor distraction to be fair.

LOVE the last line though:

‘For the North, summer is coming’
 
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leecoo said:
He normally doesn't have a good word to say about durham so will be interesting to read, always seems ready with a dig or two
Click to expand...
Quite suprised by that article by Atherton for as you correctly say he has always found it difficult to say anything positive about us. Even when we were closing in on victory against Hampshire at Lords in 2007 all he seemed to concentrate on was reminiscing about how easy it was to beat us in the early days.

Suprised he never mentioned the sub- Arctic temperatures you get in Chester le Street.
 
"Having been encouraged by the ECB to become an international venue, Durham then found themselves having to bid for lossmaking Tests — one of the reasons for their financial plight in the first place."

Sums up why many of us still can't trust the ECB. We'd have been fine with a smaller ground like New Road or Chelmsford but they had to have another international ground so they could bid for major tournaments. We weren't just encouraged, we had to build it or we weren't getting in the CC. They should write off any debt incurred in the test bidding process.

Good article, thanks for posting.
 
smoker said:
"Having been encouraged by the ECB to become an international venue, Durham then found themselves having to bid for lossmaking Tests — one of the reasons for their financial plight in the first place."

Sums up why many of us still can't trust the ECB. We'd have been fine with a smaller ground like New Road or Chelmsford but they had to have another international ground so they could bid for major tournaments. We weren't just encouraged, we had to build it or we weren't getting in the CC. They should write off any debt incurred in the test bidding process.

Good article, thanks for posting.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. I completely understand Bostock and the club’s stance on this. Professionally they absolutely have to get on with the ECB but I personally will never forgive Graves’ ECB for the way they treated us. Ultimately, much of our demise was down to them and they weren’t at all prepared to acknowledge that fact, or to mitigate for it.

Fortunately, under Ian Watmore, it seems (in the very early stages atleast) that he is much more pragmatic than the previous regime. One thing is for sure, he doesn’t appear to put Yorkshire CCC’s needs above that of every other county.
 
Like this bit
"They are not just the most northerly outpost but also a club who are fuelled by very different ingredients from most southern counties, who rely heavily on links with private schools. Durham’s strength is in their club system and their playing staff will have more state-school representatives than most, and more that have been fashioned in club cricket rather than the schools system.
In that sense, there is more of a distinctive flavour to be found in Durham cricket than most counties. They have a real sense of who they are and whom they represent."

It's also nice to hear of talent coming through from the u15's and u17's. Finger's crossed.
 
smoker said:
"Having been encouraged by the ECB to become an international venue, Durham then found themselves having to bid for lossmaking Tests — one of the reasons for their financial plight in the first place."

Sums up why many of us still can't trust the ECB. We'd have been fine with a smaller ground like New Road or Chelmsford but they had to have another international ground so they could bid for major tournaments. We weren't just encouraged, we had to build it or we weren't getting in the CC. They should write off any debt incurred in the test bidding process.

Good article, thanks for posting.
Click to expand...

6m debt, we'll have paid more than that in bidding fees to host the tests they insisted we held, and then they scrap the 1m fee just after shafting us.
 

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