Hugh Morris, the former England and Wales Cricket Board managing director, took no pleasure in seeing his replacement, Paul Downton, struggle with the fallout from the Kevin Pietersen affair and says the biggest challenge facing the new director of cricket will be the volume of international cricket being played.
Downton was removed from the post at the start of this month after England’s dismal group-stage exit from the World Cup, with the ECB chief executive, Tom Harrison, outlining plans for restructuring that would give his replacement greater control of the senior men’s side.
The former England captains Michael Vaughan, Andrew Strauss and Alec Stewart have all put their names forward to become director of England cricket, with the job description not being made public until after an appointment is made and likely tailored to suit the preferred individual.
Morris, the current chief executive at Glamorgan, held the old managing director post for six years to the end of 2013, overseeing three Ashes wins and a World Twenty20 title in 2010 before standing down and being replaced by Downton, who officially started in February last year. A string of public relations gaffes following Pietersen’s removal from the team, amid dwindling results, proved Downton’s downfall.
“It gave me no pleasure I’ve got to say, none at all,” Morris replied, when asked if he was happy to be out of the picture when Pietersen’s central contract was cancelled a week into Downton’s tenure. “In professional sport you are clearly judged by the results you have and results have not been helpful. I know Paul and on a human level he is a really nice bloke and he has had a tough time.”
The job both Morris and Downton occupied – a recommendation of the Schofield report in 2007, which examined the 5-0 Ashes whitewash in Australia the previous winter – included responsibility for managing the technical directors for the men’s and women’s teams, the head of science and medicine, the head of elite coach development, the National Academy in Loughborough and the selection panel.
However, Morris believes the new position, the interview process for which is being run by Jim Chaplin of headhunting firm Sports Recruitment International with an appointment due before the summer Test series with New Zealand at the end of May, will not be as wide-ranging. “This job would seem to be focused on the England men’s team – a football manager type role,” he said. “It seems a lot of the structures, like Loughborough and the science and medicine element, are going to be someone else’s responsibility.”
Despite this greater focus and Harrison’s insistence the buck will stop with the new appointment, Morris says whoever gets the job will be only as successful as the team around him. “My philosophy is simple: if you get high quality people and you create the right environment, you get the right results,” he said. “It is not just the management doing well, it is the players, the coaches and the support staff. Everybody has a common purpose.”
One of the stated aims of the new regime in charge at the ECB – Harrison and the incoming chairman, Colin Graves – is to produce an international schedule that promotes quality over quantity. England are currently two Tests into a run of 17 in nine months, which also includes 21 one-day internationals and five Twenty20s before the World Twenty20 in India next March.
For Morris there is no doubt the volume of cricket needs to be addressed. “Having been party to God knows how many structural reviews, I’ve said previously that I think we generally play too much international cricket,” he said. “You need to get the right balance between the amount you prepare, the amount you play and the amount you rest and I just felt sometimes we didn’t have the balance right. I always felt, with my previous hat on, that asking players to spend 250, 260 nights a year in hotel rooms was a joke. It was very difficult.”
