{"id":491342,"date":"2026-03-23T19:13:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/491342\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T19:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:13:13","slug":"former-west-brom-and-wolves-man-is-shaping-the-immediate-future-of-english-cricket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/491342\/","title":{"rendered":"Former West Brom and Wolves man is shaping the immediate future of English cricket"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gould – who turned out for both Wolves and Albion during his playing days – spent 15 fruitless months at The Hawthorns during a managerial career that took in nine different clubs and the Welsh national team across four separate decades and saw him famously win the 1988 FA Cup with Wimbledon.<\/p>\n

His son is Richard Gould, the chief executive of the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB), who today defended the decision to stick with Brendon McCullum and Rob Key in the wake of another Ashes thrashing – citing the hire and fire culture of his father’s career.<\/p>\n

\"ECBECB chief executive Richard Gould (John Walton\/PA)<\/p>\n

\u201cCricket is a very unique sport in that it takes a team of leadership\u2026it\u2019s not like football where there\u2019s a single point of failure or success with a manager,\u201d he said. \u201cWe do keep a very close eye on all of our supporters, we have a variety of different means and it\u2019s not just through the formal media that we do that, but neither are we going to select or deselect management based on a popularity campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy old man was a football manager: sacking was part of the job. It didn\u2019t necessarily do the right thing. Moving people on can sometimes be the easy thing to do. That\u2019s not the route that we\u2019re going to take.”<\/p>\n

\"BobbyBobby Gould (centre) as part of the Wolverhampton Wanderers squad for the 1971-72 season, when his contemporaries included John Richards (next right as you look at the picture)<\/p>\n

Bobby Gould took over at The Hawthorns in February 1991 and, despite a nine-match unbeaten run, could not prevent Albion suffering relegation to the third tier for the first, and so far only, time in their history.<\/p>\n

The Baggies board kept faith with Gould the following season – despite a clamour for his assistant Stuart Pearson to be given the job following a spell in charge as caretaker manager.<\/p>\n

\"GoalmouthAlbion fans storm the pitch at the end of their 3-1 victory over Shrewsbury Town to protest against manager Bobby Gould<\/p>\n

However, Albion failed to even made the play-offs – leading to infamous scenes on the final day of the 1991\/92 season at Shrewsbury, which saw Baggies fans walk to Gay Meadow with a coffin bearing Gould’s name and then storm the pitch at the final whistle to protest further, despite a 3-1 win for their side.<\/p>\n

While England’s travails on the cricket pitch have not quite plumbed those depths, there have been growing calls against McCullum and Key at the end of a tour Down Under that saw them surrender the Ashes meekly.<\/p>\n

The ECB promised a \u201cthorough review\u201d in the wake of the resounding 4-1 defeat Down Under, a tour plagued by criticisms of sloppy preparation, excessive drinking and selection mistakes, but has concluded evolution under McCullum as head coach and Key as managing director is preferable to swinging the axe.<\/p>\n

\"BrendonBrendon McCullum will remain as England head coach (Robbie Stephenson\/PA)<\/p>\n

A 4-0 loss in Australia four years earlier saw both predecessors \u2013 Chris Silverwood and Ashley Giles \u2013 pay with their jobs and there has been a considerable appetite for similar action among sections of the support.<\/p>\n

But ECB chief executive Richard Gould said: \u201cI\u2019ve seen the driving ambition and determination that we\u2019re lucky enough to have within our leadership group to take the lessons from the Ashes and move forward. I think what we\u2019ve seen is a determination from all those involved to adapt and evolve, to understand that there are different ways of doing things.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of people hurt by what went on during the Ashes, but equally determined to now put things right and looking forward to seeking revenge in 2027.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gould – who turned out for both Wolves and Albion during his playing days – spent 15 fruitless…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,218,217,101,56,54,55,29406,21664],"class_list":["post-491342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-football","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-west-bromwich-albion","tag-wolverhampton-wanderers-fc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}