England: Inside cricket (8 May 1999)

8 May 1999

England: Inside cricket

Mihir Bose

Less than 24 hours before England's cricketers open the World Cup against Sri Lanka on Friday, top adminstrators will meet at Lord's to consider a confidential report that could lead to pay parity with the big earners of Australia and South Africa.

I can reveal the detailed proposals of the Trangmar Report, commissioned by the English Cricket Board. It will allow the likes of Alec Stewart, who earns around £80,000 from playing, to compete financially with, say, Steve Waugh, who commands more than £200,000 a season from Australia.

a minimum of £41,000 for the least experienced Test player for a six-month contract covering the English summer. £32,000 per year for one-day international players. win-bonuses of up to £50,000 a man for a Test season, and £30,000 for a one-day player. increased compensation to counties for the loss of England players.

As a result, from 2000 Stewart could expect to earn more than £100,000 for playing for England and as much another £80,000 in win bonuses. The only snag is that to earn that much England would have to win all 13 Test matches and 17 one-day internationals in a year. Stewart can also expect up to £40,000 from an overseas England tour and also a limited contract with his county.

The report, prepared by Don Trangmar, the Sussex chairman and a former Marks and Spencer executive, breaks new ground by recommending that players are contracted to the ECB for six months during an English summer. During this time their county contracts will be "dormant". This would put England on a par with Australia and South Africa, except that their contracts are for longer periods.

After exhaustive consultation with the counties, the report recommends that the England contracts should start from the spring of 2000. It says that 15 or 16 players should get Test contracts and a further seven or eight receive one-day international contracts. The report also says that there should be a separate one-day squad of about 14 or 15 players.

In recommending how much a player should be paid the report says it took the fees paid for Tests and one-day internationals during the summer of 1998 and the winter of 1998-99, increased them in line with inflation and then halved them to get the figure for the six-month contract. It comes to £41,000 for Test players. But this, says the report, is for a player who has minimal Test or one-day international experience. Someone like Stewart could expect to be paid around £70,000 for the contract.

For one-day players the report recommends that they be paid £32,000 each, one-third during the summer and two-thirds for their winter work.

The report also recommends that Test and one-day players be given a incentive including a new "match win" bonus. The annual incentives for the Test squad should be £820,000, to be split between them, but to reach this the players would have to win all 13 Tests that England are likely to play that year.

The incentives for the one-day squad would be £455,000 but again in order to hit the jackpot England would have to win 17 games during the year.

As for the compensation to the counties the report recommends that for each Test player contracted with England the county should get £61,600.

All this is necessary says the report because at present "England players are not sufficiently trained or prepared to meet the present technical, physical, psychological and lifestyle demands of cricket at the international level and the wider responsibilities that accompany them (eg training in media, sponsorship, PR matters)".

The report is likely to be accepted by the counties, the only debate will be whether they will be happy with their compensation. For the World Cup counties are getting a flat £30,000 for each player on England duty. Lancashire and Yorkshire wanted £40,000 and might again ask for more money.

EVERY World Cup seems to produce a ticket scandal and this one is no exception. Consider the facts. More than a year ago, those keen to get tickets were sent a complex three-page letter explaining that they should appply almost exactly a year before the first match, and restricted each applicant to four tickets per match until the semi-finals.

Michael Ball, from Somerset, applied for a package of matches, including West Indies v Pakistan in Bristol and Sri Lanka v India in Taunton. He was told - back in September - that he could have the tickets for the Taunton match, but not for Bristol. But in last Saturday's Daily Telegraph he read that 500 tickets for the Bristol match were on sale at the ground. It turns out that tickets meant for the overseas market came back and sponsors did not take up their allocation.

The ticket centre at Lord's had a waiting list for the Bristol match, containing 3,000 names, and Lord's wrote to each off them giving them 10 days to take up the allocation. But Lord's were overwhelmed. They had around 14 phone lines and people just could not get through. So tickets were sent for sale by the counties . . . and all the applicants who had been told to deal only with Lord's were referred back to their counties.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)