Tom Richardson Reflects On Time As Chief Executive
29 January 2013
Tom Richardson has been reflecting on the “fantastic team effort” that has made his time as Gloucestershire chief executive so enjoyable.
Last week Tom announced that he would be leaving in September after 12 years in the job. So we asked him to reflect on his seasons in charge.
In the first of an exclusive series of articles for this website, Tom began by recalling the circumstances of him joining Gloucestershire in 2001.
He said: “I had spent 30 years in the Army and was working as the head of Operations at the Army Training Recruitment Agency, which is the biggest individual training organisation of its kind in Europe.
“Having reached the rank of full colonel in the Army, I simply decided the time was right to go and do something else, so I applied for the job at Gloucestershire.
“I had played cricket for the Army and for Hong Kong, where a team-mate was Peter Anderson, who used to be chief executive at Somerset. And I had been a member of the Hong Kong Cricket Board.
“There was no background in county cricket. I think what got me the job with Gloucestershire was that I had done a strategic planning job and looked after a massive budget, plus the leadership, management and administrative skills I had picked up in the Army.”
On the field things were going well, with Gloucestershire undisputed kings of domestic one-day cricket, but there was a big job to do off the pitch.
Tom recalled: “The team had just won five trophies in two years. My very first week in the job was the second week of the 2001 Cheltenham Festival and I just thought what a marvellous thing I has become part of.
“At that stage the County Ground was owned by the Royal and Sun Alliance and the key tasks were to continue building the club as a business and to get an Academy up and running.
“A lot of my initial efforts went into launching an Academy and we managed to get funding for it to get it up and running in 2002. Now all the counties have them and we have seen some real success in terms of young players graduating into the first team.
“Ground development was not really on the agenda to start with. There was an aspiration to buy the ground back, which was nudging away in the background.
“That came to fruition in 2004, with Jim Harris, our treasurer at the time and an excellent director for the club, leading the way, with me in support.
“Buying the ground back enabled us to do a number of things. We had already been asked to do the marketing for the gymnasium - which was part of the Royal and Sun Alliance Sports and Social Club – and when we bought the ground backwe put our own team in to run it, including our current strength and conditioning coach Chris Bodman.
“It has been marvellous to see that grow in the years since to the extent that the gym now has nearly 1,200 members and brings in three times the annual revenue that our cricket membership does.
“My first three years in the job proved busy and by 2004 we owned the ground, the gym and had our Academy in full swing. That really laid the foundations for what we have been able to do since.
“I would stress that it was a real team effort and the developments I have mentioned were certainly not just down to me.”
Tom was at the helm when county cricket was transformed by the arrival of T20 and admits he had little idea at the time of what an impact it would have.
“In 2003 Twenty20 cricket came in for the first time and we staged one of the very early televised games on a Saturday morning,” he said.
“We played Worcestershire at the County Ground. I remember sitting down the night before with the commercial manager John Fletcher and we were pondering whether or not this new format was going to work.
“We weren’t sure we were going to get a lot of walk-ups and whether it would be a decent crowd. We had really pushed hard to get as many people to attend as we could because no one quite knew whether T20 would be a success.
“In the event, there was a big crowd and it proved a very successful introduction to Twenty20 for us, with the competition taking off from thereto an extent that few would have confidently predicted.”
In part two of this series Tom will reflect on events on the field during his spell as chief executive, including the international matches staged at the County Ground and the lifting of two one-day trophies.
