This letter, as sent to the above named at the ECB’s headquarters, is being reproduced in these columns to give it plenty of publicity. The purpose is twofold. First, to make the triumvirate realise that their stated reason for recently disposing of Brendon McCullum (BMC) as Head Coach of the England men’s Test team is really no more than an ostensible one, even though they themselves probably don’t realise this.
Second, it is to signal that it is not too late to save BMC from himself as England men’s ODI coach. The 50 Overs matches don’t require a coach as the captain of the team can, and usually does, dictate tactics as the game unfolds, and so this position can be safely dispensed with as soon as practicable and affordable.
So, to the substance of the letter itself.
The Problem of Being Brendon McCullum and
What the ECB could do about it.
The underlying reason why BMC was sacked (somewhat belatedly) as coach of England’s Test team was actually not a phase of bad results per se, nor the evident friction with the team’s captain, Ben Stokes concerning match tactics (especially the approach to be taken to the batting task), nor personality clashes with the head honchos at the ECB. It was, fundamentally, because BMC had long been a gambling addict – and an unrepentant one. Not only in cricket, but also in a number of walks of life.
Witness his love affair with horse racing and the odds. He is a notable punter and breeder/owner of race horses, having owned and raced a number of horses over the years, including taking stakes in horses like Tabata, Prince Mambo and Pungo. And has participates in bloodstock ventures such as the so-called practice of “pinhooking”: buying a young thoroughbred – usually as a weanling, foal, or yearling – and hopefully reselling it for a profit at a later auction before it ever races.
Among other things, BMC has promoted the betting company 22Bet – a Cyprus-registered online bookmaking body. Having been involved with them in a brand Ambassador role from January 2023 which featured him in online and YouTube advertisements for that company promoting Indian Premier League betting markets. The optics were terrible!
It prompted the ECB to step in and scrutinise what was going on. To quote The Guardian newspaper (14 April 2023):
England head coach appeared in a string of adverts that have caused controversy in his native New Zealand.
Many YouTube users in the country had complained about being bombarded with McCullum’s adverts for the company, until Google pulled them on Tuesday for violating its policies. A spokesperson for New Zealand’s Problem Gambling Foundation called the campaign “the most aggressive marketing I’ve ever seen” while Barbara Edmonds, the minister of internal affairs, promised to “contact 22Bet to communicate our concerns about the misleading nature of their advertising”.
Under the ECB’s anti-corruption code “participants” are prohibited both from themselves betting on matches and also from “directly or indirectly enticing, persuading, encouraging or facilitating any other party to enter into a bet in relation to the result, progress, conduct or any other aspect of any match or competition”.
The ECB managed to find a way out that preserved BMC’s coaching position, saying his relationship with 22Bet didn’t breach anti-corruption rules, while seeing him step aside from that company in April 2023. The implication being that BMC realised to continue with that role would not only be widely considered inappropriate, it would likely jeopardise his coaching contract.
Now, a review using one’s own in-house lawyers, asking them to interpret existing rules and regulations, can usually be relied upon to produce any answer the head honcho administrators desire. And so it proved to be in this case. Note that finding something does not conflict with an anti-corruption rule is milder, and therefore needs fuller justification, than only saying that it does not, in itself, have the power to corrupt. In this instance, chiefly the strength to corrupt cricket enthusiasts and followers of the game among the general public. So this task of exoneration was a push-over for the ECB, whilst having a quiet word on the side with BMC to pull in his horns for self-protection.
Risky behaviour and gambling are strongly and deeply ingrained traits in BMC’s make-up. Not only did he repeatedly gamble with the fortunes of the England Test team, such behaviour was also manifest during his spell as New Zealand’s Test captain and in his longer stint as a NZ Test batsman: see my piece on his “Intriguing Associations”, published in The Cricket Statistician journal of May this year.
Like gambling among the populace at large, sometimes it comes off though mostly it doesn’t. I note the tenor of the Australian Government’s anti-gambling adverts on television. Among these:
What’s gambling really costing you? Imagine what you could be buying instead. You win some, you lose more. What are you really gambling with?
You yourselves – ECB Chairman, Chief Executive and Managing Director – may well not have had an antenna to realise that BMC has been, and continues to be, afflicted in a medical sense – much as an alcoholic is. (He comfortably passes the American Psychiatric Association’s test for having a “gambling disorder”, which requires meeting four of more of its eleven criteria.) And so the ECB has taken no positive remedial action. Specifically, to get BMC into a clinic where he could be given treatment for his gambling problem, perhaps sufficiently successful within a relatively short period of time. There are, for instance, a number of specialist National Health Service as well as private clinics across England that treat chronic gambling addiction. For its part, the NHS operates a network of specialist clinics providing free addiction therapy, psychological support and recovery programs.
The main alternative for the ECB is simply to terminate BMC’s remaining contract and face a substantial pay-out. It is understood that he would be entitled to compensation for loss of prospective salary, this for 14 months (to end of November 2027). The ECB has been coy about whether his contraction to white ball coaching has reduced his prior salary deal, known to be close to £2 million per annum. Ones guess is that it is substantially unaffected. If so, loss of earnings if BMC were to be entirely dispensed with immediately would equate to a related compensation sum of around £2.3 million.
But even if there has been something like a pro rata reduction in his salary, the compensation would still be sizeable and to the detriment of additional support for the English county championship. There are also likely to be specific severance clauses to be factored in, which remain confidential.
source https://www.cricketweb.net/an-open-letter-from-peter-kettle-of-melbourne-to-the-chairman-ceo-and-md-of-mens-cricket-at-the-ecb/
