‘Misappropriation’ of funds caps awful two years for MCC – but club is moving in right direction
MCC, the most renowned cricket club in the country, if not the world, has had a deeply troubled couple of years. It all began with the row about the plan to abandon its ‘historic fixtures’ – the Eton vs Harrow match and that between Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The decision to appoint Stephen Fry as its president for a year also outraged many members, all the more so when he proceeded to use that role as a platform from which to lobby for various minority rights and diversity issues that are close to his heart.
Last summer some members in the Long Room, who appeared the worse for drink even though it was only just lunchtime, engaged aggressively with some of the Australian team after Johnny Bairstow’s controversial dismissal when out of his ground. The club took severe reprisals against those mainly responsible (though it seems another few escaped sanction because of the absence of hard evidence), expelling one from the club and removing the privileges of two more for several seasons. Then, over the recent winter, a row broke out about the means of nominating members for election to various club committees. A vote on the procedure was carried, though with one one of the lowest pro-committee votes in recent memory.
The result of all this is that the people who run the club are now treading far more carefully around the sensibilities of the members. But they needed like a hole in the head a matter that was, quite correctly, disclosed at Wednesday’s AGM, which was that money had gone missing from the club’s coffers in what was otherwise a record year for income. The club is to be commended for its transparency about this embarrassing ‘misappropriation’ of funds – a euphemism for possible embezzlement – and its launching of a full independent investigation into the case and a review of its financial controls. No long-term or systemic problem had been identified: but it is a further blow to a club that was once run as a benign autocracy and in which members deferred to the decisions of the main committees and assumed utter rectitude on the part of the staff.
The question of trust, always important in such organisations, is of special concern now because of the question of whether MCC would accept 51 per cent of the Hundred franchise free of charge. Having perhaps learned from the high-handed conduct of the historic fixtures debate, the club is in the process of furnishing detailed information about what such a move would mean to them, not least because of the possible undesirability of some of the potential partners, and the possible need for MCC to accept dilution of its hitherto unequivocal control over Lord’s ground and its facilities. Early indications are that the club will not push the members firmly in one direction or another, but it is already clear that many of the more activist members want nothing to do with it, for three main reasons: first, the club does not need the money; second, The Hundred format is unlikely to last beyond the expiry of the present television arrangements in 2028 because of the deafening lack of interest in the format from everywhere else in the world where T20 is king; and third because MCC members are deeply uninterested in white-ball games.
If the high, or heavy, hand is not shown to members on the franchise question then it will be an indication that MCC is improving its public relations, and recognising that it is the members, and not a self-perpetuating oligarchy, that runs the club. The appointment of Lord King of Lothbury, the former Governor of the Bank of England, as the club’s new president suggests a more conservative and less grandstanding approach to the club’s future. Lord King is not noted for being a member of the wokerati, whose anti-elitist concerns have been felt to dominate a club that abounds with white, middle-class men.
He succeeds the former Hampshire captain Mark Nicholas who, unusually for one who has held the office of president, will shortly become chairman. Mr Nicholas is not renowned for understatement or passivity, but he would be well advised to develop a line in those qualities. His statement when he became president that he was against the historic fixtures continuing made him unnecessary enemies, a trait the outgoing chairman, Bruce Carnegie-Brown, was also renowned for. There are divisions in MCC and they need to be healed, something Lord King might be rather good at doing. Because of the dominance of India and T20 in the world’s game, and the control external forces have of cricket’s finances. The game is in a turbulent phase. It is at such a time that a calm and united MCC can, if it keeps its head, play a serious role.
