STEWART REGAN

on to the field made up of eleven Yorkshire born players…

 

The second part of the interview continued with questions about the current state of the domestic game.

 

Now you have introduced a membership category which doesn’t include "championship" or 4 day cricket, is the traditional form of the game doomed? Is it not just a matter of time before the marketing people declare the 4 day game uneconomic?

 

Yeah, I’ll put my marketing hat on for a moment to answer that. I’d start by saying that the different variants of the game all have different target markets. Twenty20 has proved that with the appeal to children and to families and to females. The one day game is bringing in students and more teenagers and kids then the four day game. That said I can’t ever see the four day game disappearing because the four day game is where our players learn their trade in order to compete for a future England place and we need four day cricket in order to develop the very best Test players and hone their skills. Its horses for courses - we need the one day game to generate cash, bearing in mind that last year every person that came to watch Twenty20 paid through the gate because it wasn’t included in the membership fee. We made more money on one Twenty20 game against Lancashire than for the whole seasons County Championship campaign (if you take the membership fees out of that). We’ve got to maximise income and therefore we’re marketing the different versions to different target groups to attract different people to the ground.

 

The problem with the four day game is that it takes four days. For a lot of those days people are at work.

 

Yeah, I know Geoffrey Boycott’s got some strong views on this and he’d like to see us revert to playing three day games and playing them over a weekend when people can watch them, maybe Friday to Sunday. I’m not sure we’ll ever get back to that, but this year we’ve got more Championship cricket appearing over the weekend than we’ve had before. I think traditionally it started on a Wednesday and finished on a Saturday, whereas this year we do have a few games that go over a weekend and it will be interesting to see what impact that has on the gate admissions. I’m not in favour of a Wednesday start because as you said everybody’s at work. You end up with pensioners, students and people coming in after work for an odd hour here and there and kids are at school. You don’t maximise your attendances, the players don’t like playing in front of a handful of people and it doesn’t have the same ring about it as playing in front of a packed house.

 

A lot of the games that started on Wednesdays didn’t last through until the Saturdays anyway.

 

That’s right so you get to the time of the week when everyone can come and watch and the game either isn’t on or it finishes after two or three hours. We’re not marketing the four day game in the best possible way. Unfortunately it takes us into another issue which is fixture congestion and the fact that we have too many days of cricket crammed into the season to try and accommodate Test matches, one day internationals and you’ve got to try and squeeze a quart into a pint pot. I think there should be a radical overhaul of the domestic structure and I know that the ECB are looking at that in 2007 with a view to making changes in 2008. I’d like to see a complete scrapping of the Pro40. Of all of the different versions I think a 40 over game struggles to find a target audience. I can understand what the 50 over traditional, what I would call the FA Cup of cricket, the C & G Trophy that in 2007 will be called the Friends Provident Trophy, that’s got a specific role to play and is developing the one day player. Twenty20 which is a bit of crash bang wallop is all about getting kids interested in the game. It’s exciting, fast, there’s music and cheerleaders, full houses and a result in about three hours. Those two versions of the one day game have specific roles to play. The four day game has a specific role to play, but I can’t see what the Pro40 is trying to do. I’d like to see more Twenty20 because we make money from it. We only have four home games and considering the money we make from those compared to the rest of the season it doesn’t take a genius to work out why the clubs are keen to do play more Twenty20, less of the Pro40 and developing the Championship cricket so we don’t only play seven or eight teams a year. I know there is a school of thought that we play everyone in a traditional Championship. I would be a fan of that if there were fewer teams. Whilst you have eighteen teams plus everything else you just can’t do it.

 

Is there any chance of getting some decent beer in the bars?

 

To put the record straight, we own the catering rights have bought the ground and all of the income streams in December 2005, but we subsequently sold on those catering right in return for a six figure up front payment which the club takes at the start of the year. The catering rights are sold back to the Headingley Experience who provide the current catering and bar operations for the rugby and cricket. The decision on which beer is stocked, prices and menu options on the catering is managed by the Headingley Experience with input from us. The point I would make is that Yorkshire County Cricket Club, irrespective of the fact that it’s Tetley bitter that’s sold in the Long Room, have done a deal with the Caledonian Brewery who have a brand of beer called Deuchars which is our official beer. It is sold upstairs at the cricket centre and if readers haven’t actually tried it, it doesn’t cost anything to get in there and all of the profits from the sales go directly to the club. Any purchase of food or beer in there really benefits the club and I would encourage people to take advantage of that.

 

What date is the AGM?

 

17^th March. Voting papers are going out next week.

 

When will the Test match tickets be sent out?

 

Imminently, we’ve been taking orders online and through the ticket office and they will be despatched in the next few weeks, during February or early March.

 

When will the design details of the development of the Kirkstall Lane End be available and how will members be involved in the consultation process?

 

When the voting papers go out next week there will be an update on the planned pavilion at the Kirkstall Lane side of the ground. Needless to say we will be asking members for their approval on what the clubs plans are. All I will say is that it is very exciting and we are very close to getting the green light.

 

After the building of the new pavilion, how else will Headingley change?

 

The priority at the moment is the pavilion, because of the need for a new media centre with state of the art TV and radio broadcasting positions. We also need to provide player changing facilities because we’re currently sharing with the rugby club which is not ideal particularly when you’ve got international cricket teams coming to play and they are not big enough given the size of cricket bags. After that the next priority will be the rugby stand where we have artists impressions and costings at the moment to put in a new stand with an extra 4000 seats. Everyone tells us that that’s the best view of cricket in the stadium and we want to make sure we get as many seats in there as possible. Other things talked about but not yet planned include covering the Western Terrace with a tented rood similar to Lord’s and Trent Bridge. Legislation around open access and exposure to sunlight, I think we’re going to have to take a more responsible approach to people sitting in sunlight for 8 or 10 hours a day. I think a tented roof on that stand would make a fantastic addition to the stadium. That’s something for the future and it’s subject to finance and getting everything else sorted out first.

 

The Adams saga has delayed progress this winter but has it hindered the long-term objectives?

 

No, I think the only thing it has created has been a two or three month lag on being able to start the pavilion development. We initially said we’d get cracking after the West Indies Test, whereas in reality we won’t start clearing the site until after the one day international against India. We will start work in earnest in probably spring 2008 to get everything sorted so that the shell will be in place, hopefully by the time we play South Africa at the end of 2008 and then we’ll be already to go for The Ashes in 2009. The Adams thing has been an irritation rather than anything else. It cost us a bit of time but certainly everybody’s been working flat out behind the scenes and we’re pretty much on track with what we want to do.

 

Do you have a 5 year plan to move back towards a predominantly Yorkshire born and bred side?

 

There’s not a written down plan but there is always dialogue on this topic. Our President Bob Appleyard is extremely passionate about the development of home grown talent and wants to see a team with 11 Yorkshire players. The idealist in me probably agrees – wouldn’t it be great if we had the best players in the world all coming from Yorkshire and representing their own county. I think it’s a bit of a pipe dream if I’m perfectly honest and I think, whilst we can develop our own talent rising through the Academy, lifestyles today and peoples circumstances are vastly different to how they were thirty or forty years ago – kids go off to university, go and live somewhere else and it’s difficult to tie people to living in the same county that they were born in for the rest of their lives. That said we have some exciting prospects coming through the Academy now – people like Adam Lyth, Andrew Gale. Joe Sayers, Greg Wood, James Lee. I think that the clubs plan over the next few years will be to try and accommodate more and more of those players in the first team squad. Next season you’ll see the ECB policy of one overseas player implemented and Yorkshire have to decide how we handle that. We currently have Younus Khan and Jason Gillespie, but we’re also committed to a three year contract with Jacques Rudolph so the likelihood is we’ll have one overseas player and then our Kolpak options, depending upon where we get to with Deon and Jacques over time. Hopefully we can develop our own talent who will come in and replace them. It’s a bit of a moving feast. Things change, and in Yorkshire they seem to move from week to week (laughs) and you can’t always write down a five year plan because I’ll bet your bottom dollar it doesn’t happen because of circumstances.

 

What is the policy is on how often the one day shirt is changed? Will we be wearing the nasty yellow thing in 2007 as well?

 

I can’t believe you’re calling it a ‘nasty yellow thing.’ I think it’s a great and high profile shirt which certainly stands out in a crowd. Our policy is that we will try and get a two year shelf life out of the shirts and what we will be doing in 2007 is wearing the yellow shirt for the Trophy and Pro40 games and the blue shirt for the Twenty20. There’s a brand new white shirt which has a new contemporary design which hopefully people will like and then from 2008 we are currently reviewing our kit suppliers, design and colour strategy so from 2008 we may have something a bit different.

 

Bearing in mind your roots who do you cheer for when Yorkshire play Durham?

 

Yorkshire of course – that’s who I work for, who pays my wages and who my commitment is with. I was never actually a supporter of Durham County Cricket Club when I was growing up. I was quite young at the time and cricket wasn’t my sport – it was athletics first and football second. It was only when I moved into Yorkshire and this opportunity came along that I really started to get into county cricket. I would suggest that I’m an adopted Yorkshire man now after the best part of 18 years here.

 

How would you asses your own performance?

 

I wouldn’t publicly. It’s up to other people to assess it – my chairman, the board, our member and the fans will all form a view. I think over the last few months I’ve had a variety of opinions on the job I’m doing. I remember getting a letter through the post with a picture of a tombstone with the letters RIP across the middle with my name underneath – that was shortly after I announced the new membership programmes.

 

People will form a view based on how any decisions the club are making effect their own personal circumstances. If it’s going to cost them more money to see the club, if it’s going to effect where they sit or what they can do they will obviously have a moan and a groan about it. Change is not always easy to accept and people find it difficult as they just want it to be as it was. Unfortunately people coming here with a flask of coffee and sandwiches without spending a penny on the club and expecting to watch county cricket for the equivalent of a pound a day is not going to pay the wages or manage the overheads.

 

This job unfortunately requires me to make some hard decisions and I’m the part of the club people see, but we have a team here who are all determined to move the club forward. We have to make difficult decisions and sometimes you have to bite your lip, get on with it and get through the hard part knowing that the vision you have for the club is sacrosanct and we are all desperately keen to turn this into one of the biggest and busiest cricket grounds in the country with a thriving membership and more junior members than we currently have, with people interested in buying our merchandise and the team performing on the pitch and winning things. That’s a great vision to have, but from where we were at the start of last year there’s a hell of a journey to take and the board is determined to get there.

 

Thank you to Stewart for his time. Please keep an eye on this site for details of the next ‘Regan Responds’ where you will have your chance to submit questions to Yorkshire’s chief executive.

 

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