The 'Shambolic' Meeting That Cost Ian Watmore His Job as ECB Chairman
By Nick Hoult
Chief Cricket Correspondent
It was in a meeting room at Lord’s on the second day of the Bob Willis Trophy final last week that Ian Watmore’s fate as chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board was sealed.
The end-of-season get-together of county chairmen and chief executives was the first time they had all met in person for 18 months, since the start of the pandemic, and there were big decisions to be taken over the structure of the domestic game. The counties also wanted clarity on England’s call to pull out of the Pakistan tour because many had received angry phone calls from local Asian cricket officials who felt insulted by the cancellation, and were worried by the “optics” of the decision.
Instead, the meeting was a “shambles”, according to one source, with Watmore not in command of his brief and failing to show direction or leadership.
It ended with no agreements struck on the future of the domestic game and Watmore failing to adequately explain the decision to cancel the Pakistan tour. It was described by one person in the room as “without question the worst senior management performance I have witnessed in my career”.
It was said to be “bumbling, rambling, inconsequential nonsense” and Watmore had “no command of the brief and no demonstrable EQ [feeling] for the room”. There was “no coherence to any of his answers and no demonstrable leadership skills whatsoever”.
Watmore further upset county officials by not going for a drink afterwards and instead going to Stoke for a Jethro Tull concert which he later tweeted about, a minor matter but described by a county source as “naive in the extreme”.
During the meeting it was clearly evident that “Ian lost the dressing room”.
Watmore’s county colleagues describe him as “on a personal level, a nice man” but “not fit for purpose and actually out of his depth”.
Soon emails were fired off to Barry O’Brien, the deputy chairman of the ECB, and serious moves started to remove Watmore. Watmore, too, was beginning to feel the strain of a job that changed from the time he was appointed in February 2020 to when he took over from Colin Graves more than six months later.
He inherited a board recovering from job cuts and financial issues caused by Covid and then faced the abrupt cancellation of the Old Trafford Test, with the potential to cost £20 million, the Pakistan tour controversy and the tense negotiations with players and Cricket Australia over the Ashes tour.
One source said the ECB was “pushing at an open door” when Watmore was told he should go on Wednesday night as plans to hold back the announcement until after the final approval of the Ashes tour were shelved to quell mounting rebellion among the counties.
Watmore’s colleagues on the executive board decided he had to leave just a year into a five-year contract worth £150,000 a year. Watmore was the first chairman to be appointed by a nominations committee. Unlike his predecessors, he did not have a grounding in county cricket, but had worked for the Football Association, although only lasted 10 months in that role, and a long career at the top of business and the civil service.
But, new to the sport, he had to build relationships and grapple with issues ranging from the domestic game to roles on the International Cricket Council board. He travelled to every county this summer and, at international level, was put in charge of cricket’s bid for Olympic status, becoming a close adviser to Greg Barclay, the chairman of the ICC. Watmore’s legacy to the game may well be overseeing the dismissal of the ICC’s chief executive, Manu Sawhney, who was deeply unpopular with staff and accused of bullying.
Watmore was heavily criticized for the failure to get on the front foot and publicly explain the decision to cancel the Pakistan tour. The board felt it could not trust the security advice and worried it would send a team that could soon face an emergency evacuation following a security threat similar to the one that led to New Zealand abandoning their trip hours before the opening game.
The ECB let down Pakistan, who helped save England’s summer in 2020, and Ramiz Raja, the chair of the Pakistan Cricket Board, was thought to be deeply unimpressed by Watmore’s explanation and apparent failure to give him a straight answer.
Watmore spoke to Telegraph Sport for over an hour on the day before the meeting that cost him his job. He gave no indication of being tired of the role and was looking forward to giving up his job as head of the Civil Service Commission on Oct 1. He found combining the two jobs difficult and was looking forward to throwing himself into cricket full time.
But Watmore was gone 10 days later, and his ambitions on Olympics, women’s cricket and reshaping the structure of the domestic game will be taken on by someone else who must go into the job with a better understanding of cricket’s complexities and issues.
Graves, and his predecessor Giles Clarke, were old-fashioned strong-armed chairmen who could be direct and lack diplomacy at times, but knew how to keep the counties happy and force through change; particularly Graves, who oversaw the introduction of the Hundred. Watmore was more conciliatory in his approach, which was probably what cricket needed as the Hundred became a reality, but the job changed and he could not change with it. - Telegraph
