M Nicholas: Lord MacLaurin Pledges Commitment And Expects It In Return (2 Dec 1996)

2 December 1996

Lord MacLaurin pledges commitment and expects it in return

By Mark Nicholas

ON WEDNESDAY afternoon last the chairman of Tesco, knighted in 1989, was introduced to the House of Lords. The grand, historical ceremony took less than 10 minutes and after it Lord MacLaurin of Knebworth admitted, without cliche, that the deeply humbling occasion might just have made for the most memorable day of his life. This will have raised the eyebrows of a few people close to the already remarkable life of his lordship. Not that they doubt his sentiment, just that there have been a lot of memorable days.

Incidentally, and pointedly given present circumstance, Lord MacLaurin is also the new chairman of English cricket.

English cricket is lucky for this because it has had a rum time of late. The national team are below par and the domestic game is in a time warp. The Test and County Cricket Board, essentially the 18 counties who run the game, are an over-populated and self-interested body who lack conviction and direction. Neither do the TCCB sit comfortably alongside the MCC, the game`s oldest, largest and, in some ways, most important private club; nor do they convince anyone, home or abroad, that they are doing all they can to set English cricket right.

Thankfully, of late, there has been a stirring. The constitution has been rewritten and in the New Year a fresh, though not altogether different, English Cricket Board will replace the tired TCCB. A young, bright chief executive, Tim Lamb, has been appointed. A slimmer, slicker management board await selection and Ian MacLaurin, high sheriff of the most successful superstores in the land, a company which he has taken from the bones of its backside to the top of its tree, is the boss.

Why, even the poacher, that barrel of beef, Botham, is back to gamekeep. Well, it might work. Whatever, these are mighty boosts in the hour of need.

MacLaurin says he is flattered by his appointment because cricket has been his first love. He played for the Kent second team - in the days of the amateur, after five years in the Malvern School XI - but finished with the idea of first-class cricket when Jack Cohen, creator of the "pile it high and sell it cheap" slogan, talked him into Tesco.

"Colin Cowdrey said I was leaving a decent cricket club for a lousy grocer," says MacLaurin. "Jack Cohen said =A31,000 a year and a company car - if we like each other after six months." That was in 1959. He has been with the company ever since.

MacLaurin was a fine footballer too, played for the Corinthian Casuals with long-time head of the cricket mafia Doug Insole, "in the days when programmes cost three pence", and continued cricket with Welwyn Garden City where he took on the captaincy in his early 20s. On the golf course he plays to 11 handicap and is on the board at the Valderrama club in Spain where, by no coincidence, the Ryder Cup will consume us next September. No guesses, by the way, who is vice-chairman of the Ryder Cup committee . . . yup, same fella; and no surprise either then that even Severiano Ballesteros`s powerful bid to stage the Cup with the Nova Sancti Petri club was brushed aside.

Oh, and for the record, he is chairman of the UK Sports Council, too. All of which tells us that MacLaurin is a sportsman every bit as much as he is a retailer; only he doesn`t blow a trumpet, just gets on with the job.

"Yes I am very, very flattered to be asked to work with English cricket. Clearly this has been a dispiriting, damaging time for the game, which has made us all very sad. I saw the team at breakfast in Cape Town last January and they looked tired, as if they would rather have been anywhere else in the world. I felt sorry for them and thought they must be looked after better so that their schedule doesn`t dim their enthusiasm," he says, without fuss.

"Amber lights are flashing in English cricket, people will not stand for a fourth-rate England side. Sponsors and television will not shell out millions for a sloppy product. It is important that the players understand this and it was good to talk with the team last Monday before they flew to Zimbabwe. They are our best and must be treated as such and in return they must represent us with complete commitment.

"Tim Lamb and I had a private get-together with the management team too, and Michael [Atherton] began to realise that appearance and image do matter, that money doesn`t fall from trees, that perhaps it wasn`t a coincidence that Tetley had withdrawn their support for the team 10 days earlier. He accepted that a shave, a smart shirt and a smile was a good way to go.

"We told the players that it was our top priority, back here in London, to work towards England being the best team in the world. They were assured of our absolute, unconditional support and we explained that all of us must move together in the same direction, as one team."

Team. MacLaurin is big on the "team". He built one in his business and he is looking for the whole breadth of English cricket to emerge from this self-examination as a team. MacLaurin and Lamb are travelling the counties canvassing views and from these will come a blueprint.

"We have a few bull points for the talks," he says. "But otherwise we start with a blank sheet of paper. It is their game so it is their thoughts that we shall collate and draw conclusions from. From these will come a plan and from that we shall not divert. I am telling them all to phone me, talk to me. Communication is imperative; bickering and politicking are hopeless. If we opt for change and their members need convincing I`ll be there to talk to them, too. I will give the pounds, shillings and pence of the business and explain that the national team must be the focus."

Men have tried before his lordship to break this strange and parochial lair. Indeed, one very eminent cricket writer said recently: "Give Ian a year and as hard as he tries, he`ll be back stacking baked beans on shelves."

"Well, I`ve got to work very hard at this I know," says MacLaurin. "And in the end they can take me or leave me, but I cannot believe that English cricket does not want to respond to its own problems."

MacLaurin is 60 next spring and retires from Tesco soon after. He is crisp, fit and suntanned. "Far too suntanned; does he ever do any work?" asks his mate, Colin Ingleby-MacKenzie, who by happy quirk is the new president of the MCC. "He is absolutely the right man, a clear thinker, direct, sincere and immensely thoughtful. He will be the salvation, if he is allowed to be. English cricket could not be luckier." And, the two men say, they will work to build the bridge between the Board and the MCC so that they move in harmony like they were supposed to when, nearly 30 years ago, they assumed their different roles in service of the game.

Ingleby-MacKenzie`s adjectives are echoed and added to by the host of top dogs who have seen MacLaurin from close hand.

"Tough but fair, and very ethical," says Sir Alistair Grant, another close friend, admirer and rival as chairman of Argyll Group, which incorporates Safeway. "Terse sometimes, often late, genial and extremely generous. He likes action and doesn`t suffer fools but he brings sympathy to his work and great thought before he makes decisions.

"I should be surprised if he doesn`t already have a plan for English cricket at the back of his mind as he surely had for his company all those years ago. He is an excellent appointment and I can`t find a flaw."

Not so, his son Neil: "Ask him about Trivial Pursuit one Christmas Eve," he says of his father. "His answer was wrong but he wouldn`t have it and by Boxing Day morning he had posted a letter to the makers of the game saying that some of their answers needed looking into - stubborn so-and-so. We are very close, you know. The whole family, both my sisters and my own family, live near Mum [Ann] and Dad in Hertfordshire. Collectively we adore and admire them both and Mum`s role should not be underestimated."

MacLaurin has his own thoughts on the `stubborn` thing. "If having a plan or a committed opinion and sticking rigidly to it is being stubborn, then yes, I am stubborn. The truth is that I am ambitious, very ambitious. I wanted Tesco to be the best food retailer in Europe and now I want to be the catalyst that makes England the best cricket country in the world."

Sir Alistair says that the cricket world would be crazy not to go the whole hog with MacLaurin and remembers how, all those years back, the city didn`t entirely trust his commitment to massive and aggressive investment in the development of superstores. "To sum up," says Sir Alistair, "Ian is ultra-competitive, highlyexperienced, successful, well-respected and, best of all, greatly liked in his own industry."

Now wouldn`t that be a motto for the aspirations of English cricket. There is hope here within this unusual man. We must listen and not let go.

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