ECB’s Giles Clarke looks on in the company of Tom Harrison © IDI/Getty Images
Giles Clarke‘s long spell at the ECB looks set to end in 2018 due to changes in the governance of the sport.
Clarke, currently the ECB’s first president, has been on the board of the organisation since 2005 and, between 2007 and 2015, was its chairman. But with the ECB set to reduce the size of its board from 13 to a maximum of 12 (and quite possibly 10) and introduce maximum term limits, it seems certain Clarke, now aged 64, will stand aside in the next few months.
To comply with the governance requirements of UK Sport and Sport England, the ECB will shortly introduce a term limit of nine years (three terms of three years) for directors, while it will also be obliged to have a minimum of 30% of each gender on the board. At present, only two of the ECB’s 13 directors are women. While there is some scope for a director staying in position for 12 years if they are “appointed as chair… or to a senior position on an international federation” – Clarke qualifies on both counts – it will shortly become necessary for a director to have a break of four years before serving on the board again.
The ECB has previously opposed any reduction in the size of the board suggesting that to do so would pose a threat to its “operational effectiveness”. They have also claimed that the “highly complex nature of the business” necessitated longer periods in office.
The changes will be enshrined in the ECB’s amended Articles of Association – sent to counties this week and scheduled to be agreed in December and ratified at the AGM in April 2018 – alongside a raft of other adaptations. Among them will be an end to the system where the first-class counties (and the MCC) elect a chairman. It will instead be left to the board to elect one.
Clarke might charitably be said to have polarised opinions during his spell at the ECB. While he oversaw an influx of money into the game – money that helped improve facilities for spectators and players and contributed to a period of much-improved results on the pitch – he also presided over a period when cricket’s relevance diminished in the public consciousness and gained an ever-more-elitist reputation. Clarke also deserves credit for his support of women’s cricket, disability cricket and, more latterly, Pakistan cricket though his attempts to backtrack on his role on the ‘Big Three’ takeover at the ICC convinced few.
The ECB also intends to introduce a Regulatory Committee in the coming weeks. Increasingly anxious about government scrutiny of governance in sport – ECB chairman Colin Graves recently described it as “the most important issue for our sport” in a letter to the counties – the committee is intended, in Graves’ words, to “ensure that we are properly protecting ourselves in relation to integrity matters”.
The committee will be chaired by Nick Coward, who has previously been CEO of the British Horseracing Authority and General Secretary of the Premier League, and also include three independent members, two senior ECB executives and an independent member from the ECB board.
George Dobell is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo