HARRISON DEPARTURE ADDS TO THE CHAOS AT LORD’S... CONNOR STEPS UP FOR MONTH
TOM HARRISON has resigned as ECB chief executive after seven years, adding to the growing sense of a lack of direction at the governing body.
Still without a chair following a heavily criticised recruitment process, the hunt is now on for a new CEO, with Clare Connor, current director of women’s cricket and president of the MCC, stepping up as interim boss from next month.
And however long she does the job for, Connor (above right and inset) will certainly hope to depart in more favourable fashion than Harrison, who leaves a game divided and in desperate need of strong, capable and empathetic leadership.
Whether he likes it or not Harrison’s legacy will revolve almost entirely around money, for good and for bad.
Brought in from broadcast giants IMG in 2015, Harrison (above, left) shored up the game’s finances with a bumper TV deal that delivered a huge £1.1 billion payday. A healthy chunk of those funds came as a result of a new 100 ball competition, aimed at families and kids, making it attractive to broadcasters and commercial partners.
And Harrison’s reward for bringing in the bacon, along with a handful of other executives, was to receive part of a £2.1million bonus.
Never mind that he oversaw 62 redundancies at the ECB as the pandemic struck and belts were tightened. Harrison was encouraged by the recently published Wisden Almanack to refuse the money or put it to use in a charitable way in the game. He is yet to do so.
Despite the success of The Hundred (above), which effectively led to the bonus, there is no mention of it anywhere in the ECB statement announcing his departure. The 50-year-old ex-first class cricketer was left battered and bruised in trying to modernise the game, only to be hit with a Covid crisis that threatened to eat away at the profits he secured.
Harrison moved swiftly and expertly to ‘keep the lights on’ by installing bio-bubbles and persuading the West Indies and Pakistan teams to tour anyway, allowing cricket to take place despite the pandemic.
As a thank-you two T20s were arranged in Pakistan in October, but England did not fulfil their fixtures.
He has had to face up to the spectre of racism that hangs over the game, whether it is to do with Black Lives Matter or the Yorkshire and Essex scandals.
But too often Harrison and the ECB’s responses have been stiff, slow, and with more than a whiff of box-ticking, even though he has declared this to be the most important issue facing the game.
World Cup wins in 2017 and 2019 should have been the perfect launchpads for the game, but Harrison simply did not get the smooth waters his vision had hoped for.