{"id":576959,"date":"2026-03-31T20:03:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T20:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/576959\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T20:03:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T20:03:19","slug":"middlesex-drifting-towards-irrelevance-gatting-leads-revolt-against-club-leadership-middlesex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/576959\/","title":{"rendered":"Middlesex \u2018drifting towards irrelevance\u2019: Gatting leads revolt against club leadership | Middlesex"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of past Middlesex<\/a> players led by the former England captain Mike Gatting has delivered a withering assessment of the county\u2019s leadership on the eve of the new season and warned the club risk \u201cdrifting towards irrelevance\u201d.<\/p>\n

In an open letter to members \u2013 a clarion call before the club\u2019s annual general meeting on 15 April \u2013 Gatting and his co-signatories have highlighted a lack of transparency and called the cricket setup \u201ca mess\u201d.<\/p>\n

The former West Indies opener Desmond Haynes and England\u2019s Mark Ramprakash are among others to have put their names to the letter.<\/p>\n

They wrote: \u201cMiddlesex was once a byword for excellence in the game, a club with a proud history of success and a strong, competitive culture brought about by hard work on and off the pitch. Instead, around the counties the men\u2019s teams now are variously regarded as \u2018a soft touch\u2019 and \u2018lacking fight\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe club has been poorly led for too long. Middlesex is first and foremost a cricket club, but the leadership lacks any real cricketing knowledge. Only one person with first\u2011class experience occupies a board position, while only two such former players appear on any of the club\u2019s committees. The cricket administration is structurally a mess, is devoid of accountability and lacks proper checks and balances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Middlesex, who won their 11th County Championship<\/a> title in 2016 (two shared), will begin a third successive season in Division Two this week after their most recent relegation in 2023.<\/p>\n

Last summer they finished second bottom of the south group in the T20 Blast and exited the Metro Bank Cup at the quarter-final stage. Their women\u2019s team operate in the second tier of county competitions but won the T20 Blast League 2 last summer.<\/p>\n

Headaches are also starting to mount off the field. They remain the only first-class county not to own their own ground and disbursements from the England and Wales Cricket<\/a> Board account for around 60% of their income, compared to an average of 25% across the 18 first-class counties.<\/p>\n

There is also a lack of access to the money from last year\u2019s Hundred sale as this is ringfenced for debt repayment \u2013 minimal in their case \u2013 and infrastructure improvements. Though a comparatively small thing, this week\u2019s media day will not include photography because the new kit is yet to be delivered.<\/p>\n

Financial issues previously saw Middlesex placed under special measures by the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2023 and they have been looking to attract outside investment since. This has included exploring demutualisation. This year\u2019s accounts are yet to be published but losses are expected.<\/p>\n

The club is also currently being run by an interim chief operating officer, Mahdi Choudhury, on secondment from Marylebone Cricket Club. The club\u2019s chief executive, Andrew Cornish, has been on a \u201cleave of absence\u201d since late last year following an allegation of misconduct. That case \u2013 something Cornish denies \u2013 is with the Cricket Regulator.<\/p>\n

This fresh intervention, including signatures from John Emburey, Clive Radley and the former president Mike Selvey, focuses chiefly on the men\u2019s cricket operation. They highlight a failure to produce sufficient homegrown players, despite a large catchment area in north London and a history of silverware.<\/p>\n

In the letter the group wrote: \u201cThe players are a product of their environment and in areas where the standard of coaching has been poor, the players have not been sufficiently challenged resulting in inadequate standards becoming the norm, insufficient to compete at the level to which we should aspire.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would strongly encourage members who genuinely want their club to flourish again and not get left behind drifting towards irrelevance, to attend [the AGM] in numbers and seek answers, in an open forum, from those responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Middlesex are one of three clubs to face pressure from former players before the County Championship gets under way this Friday.<\/p>\n

A group including Matt Prior and Mushtaq Ahmed called for the Sussex board to step down after financial shortcomings led to a 12-point suspension, while David Lloyd is among a collective of former Lancashire players openly questioning how their club is being run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of past Middlesex players led by the former England captain Mike Gatting has delivered a withering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-576959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}