EMBRACING THE FUTURE

Cricket generally has come out of the pandemic in pretty good shape considering everything that has happened. Financially, unlike some other sports, the game is still in a reasonably good position, although I suspect economic worries caused by inflation and the cost of living crisis may create problems for some in the coming 12 months.

There are ongoing debates about the domestic playing structure following the High-Performance Review last year, and this debate is unlikely to go away given the continued growth of overseas franchise T20 leagues around the world, and the growing influence of Indian Premier League owners in other competitions in the West Indies and South Africa.

Professional Cricket

2022 was another challenging year for the club both on and off the field but we came out of it stronger as an organisation and look forward to 2023 having made some significant changes, particularly on the playing structure front.

Following another disappointing season on the field, albeit one ravaged by injury particularly to our bowlers, we decided to change the structure of men’s professional cricket and appoint one Head Coach who would be responsible across all formats and the role of Director of Cricket would no longer exist. It was clear that the split coaching roles did not work in practice and greater clarity was needed for both players and coaches.

We were delighted when we appointed Paul Farbrace as our new Head Coach in December. He is vastly experienced both domestically and internationally across all formats and we are all looking forward to working with him in the coming years. He is also excited by the potential we have in the group and is both positive and ambitious for our future.

Paul has talked about our priorities going forward and they include developing home grown players for Sussex, developing players for England and winning trophies for our members and supporters. We are doing a good job on the first two but need to improve our performances on the field. Our white-ball cricket has been consistent over the last few years but our red-ball performances have not been good enough.

We have Jofra Archer and Ollie Robinson on central contracts, Tom Haines and Jack Carson in the England Lions, and Archie Lenham, Dan Ibrahim,

AFTER AN INJURY-PLAGUED 18 MONTHS IT WAS GREAT TO SEE JOFRA ARCHER TAKING WICKETS AGAIN FOR ENGLAND DURING THE ONE-DAY SERIES AGAINST SOUTH AFRICA IN FEBRUARY

James Coles, Charlie Tear and Bertie Foreman in the Young Lions, as well a host of other talented home grown players in George Garton, Ali Orr, Tom Clark, Ollie Carter, Delray Rawlins, Henry Crocombe and Fynn Hudson-Prentice to name a few. We now need to be more consistent with the red ball. Keith Greenfield has taken up a new role as Director of Pathways and Cricket Partnerships and will continue to build on the work of the last few years as we focus on creating opportunities for young cricketers across Sussex and beyond, for example our partnership with Oxfordshire. We will grow our partnership with Brighton Aldridge Community Academy to provide first-class cricket facilities for state-school children, as well as build on our relationship with the private schools who deliver outstanding cricket programmes for our young people. Our relationship with the clubs in the 1st Central Cricket League is also critical as all our young players come through some combination of school and club programme before being part of our Sussex pathway and academy.

Women’s cricket has undergone a significant change over the last few years with the introduction of the Hundred and the regional structure, which has allowed more women to become professional. We play a full role in the Southern Vipers regional programme and provide Hove as a venue for matches, BACA for training and players for the squad/academy who come through the girls’ pathway and into the Sussex Women’s team. We will consider the best way to develop our girls and women’s programme and as part of this we are launching a Sussex Women’s premier division this summer, another first for women’s cricket in our county.

Community Cricket

2022 saw another amazing year of playing and development programmes across the county. Gary Wallis-Tayler, in his role of Community Cricket Director, and our three Territory Managers Matt Parsons, Carl Tupper and Hamish Russell, together with their teams, deserve great credit for their commitment and professionalism in inspiring a passion for cricket across Sussex. I urge you to look at our Sussex Cricket Foundation 2022 Impact Report to see the scale of our programmes and how many lives we touch.

There have been many highlights as we continue to grow recreational cricket in the county and give young people an opportunity to fulfil their potential in whatever format of the game they choose.

Some of the key statistics from 2022 are:

190 affiliated clubs, 90 junior sections, 67 women’s and girls’ sections, four disability champion clubs/

143 clubs, 352 teams, 7900 players and 3016 matches played in The 1st Central Sussex Cricket League.

Over 20,000 children coached through our Chance to Shine programme.

Over £250,000 invested into clubs through County Grant Scheme or other funding streams.

£125,000 invested into our Crawley Urban Plan.

We continued to grow our flagship DIScoverABILITY day with over 600 attendees at Hove; we were the first county to host a disability cricket fixture (D40) against Surrey last June; over 1,500 children attended schools day at The 1st Central County Ground in July; and over 500 volunteers attended the Royal London One Day Cup match against Surrey for Grassroots Awards day.

As always we are indebted to the thousands of volunteers across Sussex who bring the game of cricket to life and inspire many thousands more to get involved with this great sport and in the process create a lifelong passion for it.

Commercial & Operations

Mark Judges and Ian Waring have done a remarkable job over the last three years trying to juggle the myriad operational and commercial challenges in the face of a pandemic and economic uncertainty. It is no mean feat to have achieved the results we have and maintain the financial sustainability of the club. In January, we were sad to see Mark move on to the next stage of his career as Commercial Director of Portsmouth FC. He has created a very loyal group of partners for the club, and we are very grateful for his hard work over the last decade. We will miss him and look forward to welcoming him back to Hove in the future. He leaves behind a very good team who will build on his work.

Our Marketing & Communications, Ticketing & Membership and Sponsorship & Hospitality functions have been modernised despite the challenges of the last three years and we are looking forward to returning to pre-pandemic levels of support at the ground. All of our partners have been very committed, and we were delighted to extend our ground naming rights partnership with 1st Central for another three years, which will take this long running relationship to ten years. We are also grateful for their support of the 1st Central Sussex Cricket League.

The last few years have been some of the busiest at Hove operationally. We started thinking about the masterplan for the ground in 2018 and hopefully by the start of the season phase one will be complete with the residences occupied and the Sussex Cricketer open for business. We are still marketing the three-storey office building to the rear of the residential block and hopefully this will be let during 2023. As part of preparations for phase two we will have demolished the old Wilbury office by the start of this season. The office staff have moved into the South Stand and Radius will relocate to the South-West Stand allowing them to remain on site. During 2023 we will start to consider in more detail phase two, which is a five-star conference and event space on the site of the Wilbury office. Along with a successful completion of phase one this will also be a significant addition to the look and feel of the ground and create one of the best conference and event spaces in the city.

This winter we worked on creating a changing places space and Contemplation Room as part of our commitment to the ECB’s welcoming environments plan for cricket venues, and we will be installing solar panels on the roof of the indoor school as part of our sustainability pledge to help reduce energy costs.

Finance & People

We are fortunate to have Finance Director Alan Bradshaw and People Director Kay Gunn, who have worked tirelessly to help us navigate the last few years. There have been a million and one issues to manage while all the time trying to look after our people and our business and keep moving forward as an organisation.

Financially I don’t think the club has been in such good shape since the days of the Spen Cama legacy, although this also created some challenges and perhaps a false sense of security. The completion of phase one and the creation of a new long-term income stream, and the fact we lived within our means over the last few years, means we can look forward with huge optimism and react to whatever challenges come our way, especially given that we carry no debt. I hope we can find a way to complete phase two and create another long-term legacy project for the club.

People and culture has never been more important to any organisation than at the current time. At Sussex we have always put culture and values at the forefront of everything we do. Our SHARED values – Selflessness, Honesty, Accessibility, Respect, Enjoyment, Drive have been in place for many years.

Cricket organisations have been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons over the last 12 months following the Yorkshire racism scandal while the ECB waits for the publication of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report into the state of the game. It is likely to be a tough few months, and lessons must be learned. We all have a responsibility to make the game more inclusive and diverse.

Everyone should be aware of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) action plan WE ARE YOU ARE Sussex Cricket.

I would like to thank Laura Walford, as executive assistant to the Board and senior management team, for her work in managing our County Partnership Agreement (CPA) with the ECB and working closely with the Board and the Governance, Nominations and Elections Committee (GNEC) to ensure our governance meets ECB standards as per the CPA.

Despite the challenges of the last few years, I am confident about our future and ability to adapt quickly to the changing landscape that is the sporting and cricketing world. It is exciting and we have to embrace what the future brings and do everything in our power to ensure Sussex Cricket has a part to play.

Thank you all for your continued support and I look forward to seeing you in the summer.