Leicestershire CEO Sean Jarvis' Monthly Report - July 2022
Thu 28 Jul 2022
Wow, what a month July was. A real rollercoaster. The lows of missing out on the T20 finals to the highs of creating new Club records.
For my update this month, I’ll begin with Cricket.
Firstly, I want to congratulate the first team on breaking a 116-year record.
To achieve 756 for 4 and posting an all-time record innings is a brilliant achievement. Of course, special mention here to Colin Ackerman and Wiaan Mulder who not only created the highest ever 5th wicket partnership (477) for Leicestershire but also the highest ever 5th wicket partnership in the history of the County Championship. The partnership was also the highest for Leicestershire too. Truly brilliant! I should also give a shout out to Louis Kimber who achieved his maiden century for the Club. It was a pleasure to watch.
Ultimately, however, we are a results-based business and despite some of those promising signs of progression, we must improve in the four-day format.
Onto the T20’s.
As is very well documented, we qualified but…. Then didn’t qualify! In my 30 years in sport, I have only ever had such a low feeling once before (when Huddersfield Town were beaten by Peterborough in the play-off final).
On the Friday, when we beat Northants to set up a winner takes all fixture V Yorkshire on the Sunday, it was a great feeling. However, on Saturday we were called to a disciplinary meeting and informed that we were to be deducted 2pts due to our suspended record and the two level 1 penalties achieved.
We as a Club argued as hard as we could to have the points deducted for the following season but sadly it wasn’t to be.
There are several points I do need to make here. It was disappointing to get the two level 1 penalties in the Northants fixture, especially when our team had worked on their discipline over the previous 11 months and not receiving any further penalties. As we know our previous disciplinary record has been poor and I guess this has now come back to haunt us. Rest assured the cricket coaches and players will reflect and put further sanctions on their behaviours and am sure will continue to improve.
That said I was still disappointed, especially at some of the observations I witnessed in the game V Northants. To that note I wrote to the ECB (on the Monday after the Yorkshire game) indicating my observations and what I feel are inconsistencies. I am still awaiting a reply.
For us as a Club we must now focus on the next task at hand, which is the Royal London 50 over tournament. I am sure our lads will take the momentum we are creating in white-ball cricket into that competition.
Finally on cricket, just an update on the Director of Cricket role. Interviews are underway and we will bring you news over the coming weeks. But rest assured we will look to ensure we make the right appointment for the Club.
As well as hitting the news for cricket performances, our Community activity is getting the headlines too.
Hopefully by now you will have seen that we are holding our inaugural ‘Connecting Communities Cricket Match’, which will take place at the ground on 6th September. This is a ground-breaking initiative and a first in cricket. I pretty sure other counties will follow suit in future years. The purpose of the game is to celebrate our diverse communities through a cricket game inviting representatives from our community to play and hopefully visit the ground.
Run in conjunction with the High Sheriff, Mehmooda Duke, Grace Road will not only see the cricket match, but also a family festival and the High Sheriff awards after the game. The festival will start at 3pm, then the cricket match at 4pm followed by the awards at 7.30pm. Whilst its free to enter the ground on that day any proceeds or donations made will go to our Foundation and support grassroots cricket.
It promises to be an exciting and colourful day. I hope you can make it. If you want to find out more then please visit our official website.
Our Women’s and Girls cricket team , which currently falls under our Community pillar, continues to go from strength to strength. Congrats go to four of our players, Sophie Bennett, Lucy Weston, Flora Davies and Prisha Thanawala for being selected into the Lightings’ cricket squad for the regional Academy Festival. Top work
With regards to Commercial, it’s equally been a hectic month, with lots going on.
This month it was an honour to welcome so many other sports clubs, including football, rugby and of course cricket from across the UK as part of our partnership work with The Fan Experience Company (one of our official partners) . The event, which took place in the Morningside Marquee, was a gathering of circa 100 sports administrators to discuss the customer centric approach to business and it was an honour to speak but also listen to the likes of Noel Mooney, the CEO of the FA of Wales. We can always learn to do things differently and this was a great way to do just that.
Commercial performance continues to be impressive as we are now coming to the close of quarter 3 in our financial year. To date with the final quarter to go we currently sit 4.75% ahead of our budgets.
Our commercial team are now also formulating plans for the new season, and we are encouraging businesses to sign up as quickly as possible. We do have some new properties available so please snap them up whilst you can.
The Company Pillar is one of those pillars where we look to make ongoing improvements to our organisation daily. It could be from how we order stationery to how we log our holidays. Introducing these procedures helps us create a robust and stronger organisation.
However, in the Company Pillar this month a lot of work has been done on developing a 6th Pillar (adding to our 5 Pillars of Cricket, Commercial, Community, Cash and Company). This season has been my first full season and I have now seen where we need to improve and develop hence why the introduction of a 6th Pillar. I am fine tuning a few bits but hope to bring you more details in my next CEO update. I am excited about this project, and it should significantly improve how we work.
Speaking of exciting projects, I am now working on two strategies for the Club. The first is to build on the last 2 years (Strategies of both Mitigation (year 1) and Five Steps (year 2)). Again, I hope to provide some more information in the coming months. The second is requiring a bit more time but is the longer-term strategy. Pieces of the jigsaw are being drawn together and I had hoped to bring more detail this Summer, but it is now, due to several other parties involved going to be pushed back to the winter months.
Finally, Cash.
This is always the most difficult area to control especially as some of those are outside of our control. At the moment costs are escalating and eating into any profits we make. Sadly, over the coming months we are going to have a look at our prices and possibly adjust them to the new season. Naturally, we will continue to do everything we can to make our offering as affordable as it can be, but by the same token we must continue to meet our costs and look to make a profit as a business so we can reinvest.
Thanks for taking time out to read my update and please keep supporting us. With your growing support we will continue to progress.
Sean
