Chris Adams proud of Surrey career

Chris Adams, who was sacked as Surrey's team director last week, believes he has left the club in a position to become the leading county side despite their current position towards the foot of Division One in the County Championship.

Adams, and his assistant Ian Salisbury, were shown the door after Surrey had failed to register a win in their first eight Championship matches and had endured a poor start to their YB40 campaign.

He reflected on his four-and-a-half years in the role, which he took on straight from finishing his playing career with Sussex, and insisted he remained proud of what he achieved.

"Their desire is to be the No. 1 county, competitive across the board, supplying international cricketers and young cricketers. I believe I leave it in a position to do that and I'm proud of my achievements," he told Sky Sports News. "I'm very sad I won't be part of it. But the board felt that the performances of the team this year are not what they were looking for. I can't influence that now and have to move on.

"Yes, I made some mistakes but I felt I was learning from those mistakes," he added. "Surrey has been wonderful for my education, it's a superb club, it's a great club and with greatness comes great expectations. The club has spent a lot of time and effort to try and get themselves back to the top of domestic cricket, but also in terms of being a global entity as well and they felt this was the right time to make a change."

Adams pinpointed the loss of Graeme Smith, who had joined on a three-year deal to captain the side, after just three games this season with an ankle injury as a key setback to the early stages of Surrey's campaign.

"It's about team performance. There are times when things run for you and times when they don't," he said. "I think the loss of Graeme after just three games was a big blow, particularly to me because I'd invested a lot of my time in bringing Graeme in and building a new team ethos around him."

Adams' tenure as team director was heavily impacted by the death of Tom Maynard last summer and he remains immensely proud of what the team managed to do after the emotional turmoil of that event.

"There are still many aspects of the club, the players, who are coming to terms with the loss of Tom Maynard," he said. "The last 12 months have been incredibly stressful for many, many people, especially the players who knew Tom very well, how they've had to come to terms with moving on has been very difficult.

"But I feel very proud that we somehow managed to get through last season and not get relegated - that was a huge achievement - and done with some young players who were battling with some heavy emotions."