Crisis club Middlesex are in open revolt after a group of prominent former players called on members to turn up to the club’s next Annual General Meeting on 15 April in a bid to force out chair Richard Sykes.
The group, including former England captain Mike Gatting, Desmond Haynes, Mark Ramprakash and Mike Selvey, Middlesex’s president from 2019 to 2023, have become disillusioned at the running of the club, both on and off the field, following a succession of crises. It is understood Sykes has refused calls from the former players to stand down at the coming AGM.
Now the group are going public with their concerns. The open letter, signed by Gatting, Haynes, Ramprakash, Selvey, John Emburey and Clive Radley, says they have grown “increasingly disturbed” at the demise of a club with a “proud history”.
“The club has been poorly led for too long,” the lettter reads.
Middlesex members are being asked to make their voice heard at the AGM (Photo: Getty)“Middlesex is first and foremost a cricket club, but the leadership lacks any real cricketing knowledge. Only one person with first-class cricket experience occupies a board position, while only two such former players appear on any of the club’s committees.
“The cricket administration is structurally a mess, is devoid of accountability and lacks proper checks and balances.
“The 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.
“From a ‘grassroots’ perspective, we’ve been promised many times that there are good, young players coming through. Yet despite having a catchment area that is perhaps the most populous and diverse in the country, the club is consistently failing to convert this talent in the way that other counties, often with less resource, have been able.”
The letter calls on Middlesex members to “seek answers” from the board at the Annual General Meeting on 15 April.
A club plagued by financial issues
Middlesex have been beset by financial issues for years and current chief executive Andrew Cornish is on a leave of absence following a complaint of misconduct by a member of staff. Cornish, who denied any wrongdoing, is being investigated by the cricket regulator.
Cornish’s predecessor, Richard Goatley, was reported to the Metropolitan Police by the club in May 2024 after they alleged he had claimed thousands of pounds in unauthorised expenses.
Goatley, in the role from 2016 to 2021, denied any wrongdoing and was cleared by police last year. Middlesex stated at the time they had recovered £100,000 in payments made to Goatley.
Middlesex could even move away from Lord’s (Photo: Getty)The club were also put into special measures by the England & Wales Cricket Board in September 2023, fined £50,000 and given suspended points deductions for using central funding intended for grassroots and youth programmes for their first team.
Brutal cost cutting has ensued, leading to a decline in the men’s first teams’ performance. Middlesex, currently preparing for their third successive season in Division Two of the County Championship, have made no signings over the winter other than bringing in a new coach: former New Zealand opener Peter Fulton.
A sign of the chaos at the club came on Monday when a press release revealed the club’s pre-season media day on Wednesday will be significantly scaled back “due to unforeseen circumstances surrounding the delivery of the club’s playing kit”.
Lord’s exit a possibility
Middlesex, who have made a small profit for the past two years, are hampered by being the only one of the 18 counties not to own their own ground. They currently pay the Marylebone Cricket Club around £200,000 a year in rent to play at Lord’s, which has been their home for 161 years.
It means they have no scope to earn money from non-cricketing events and is why they are exploring the opportunity of becoming a private club so they can acquire investment for a new ground away from Lord’s. That would require at least 50 per cent of the members to vote and 75 per cent of them voting in favour of demutualisation.
“Our finances are pretty challenging,” Sykes told The Telegraph in December. “We don’t have our own home. We play at Lord’s when we can. But, in 2026, we are playing relatively little cricket there because of the demands on Lord’s with the Hundred and Women’s World Cup. Just two of our six home Vitality Blast matches are at Lord’s next year.
“We get less income because we are not playing at Lord’s. The only way we could justifiably invest in a home away from Lord’s would be to find a way of someone investing into Middlesex.”
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