Gatting slides into desk job

Matt Pryor meets Mike Gatting who's undertaking his first desk job within the bowels of the ECB: managing director of cricket partnerships.

“That goes through from grassroots to first-class cricket,” Gatting said. “It encompasses MCC, PCA [the Professional Cricketers’ Association], [Lord’s] Taverners and charities, National Playing Fields Association, Sport England, premier leagues, age-group cricket, up to the first-class game. My first job was going round to all the first-class counties and talking to them about everything from issues with their county boards to academies and Kolpaks.”

But he has been at the other end of the scale, too. “I was down at a place called Englefield Green not so long ago, next to Wentworth Golf Club,” he said. “A guy had written to us to say ‘this is outrageous, we’ve got this funfair and it keeps ripping up our outfield.’ It’s one of these nice things; you go down and have a chat with the local council and hopefully there will be a compromise. So you do get out and about a bit.”

Read the full story at the Times