Rod Bransgrove on 25 Years at Hampshire; signing Shane Warne & Cricket's White-Ball future

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I'm Scott Taylor.

On today's show, we head south to Utilator Bowl Hampshire and catch up with their former

chair, Rod Brandsgrove, to celebrate 25 years of the club being at Utilator Bowl.

We'll discuss the challenges of taking over the county in 2001, some of the players that

have played for the county like the legendary Shane Warren would get Rod stories on that

as well.

And we'll discuss hosting an ashes test in 2027 and the direction of the game going forward

with 100 franchise, Southern Brave now playing at Utilator Bowl as well.

So plenty to come over the next 20 minutes or so, so sit back and enjoy as I speak with

the former Hampshire chair, Rod Brandsgrove.

So Rod, thanks for joining us, just focusing on 25 years here at Utilator Bowl.

I'm never reading an interview, you said it was an accident, you fell into a cricket

administration, but in terms of accident, Scott, it's pretty good, 25 years.

Well, it wasn't accident actually how I got into it and it was probably a result of getting

in far too deep that I couldn't really get out until now.

So yeah, it's been an accidental start, but it's been an amazing journey.

You know, it's had a lot of ups and downs and challenges.

But I think we've come out with the ultimate result really, which is we are now very, very

competitive club.

We've got men's and women's cricket at the very top level, and we are a proper international

stand of repute with a ashes test coming up in 2027.

There's the whole story really.

What's the main emotion when you sit here now and you think back?

Because there's so many moments that have happened at this ground over the last 25 years.

But what's the main sort of emotion now?

Yeah, it's a good question, because for years and years, people have been saying to me,

you must be so proud of what you've achieved here and all this kind of thing.

And I think for the first time now, I'm realizing the enormity of it all.

I think I was always so busy because there was always the next challenge.

There's always something difficult to do to achieve.

But now I feel we're passing over to a really well-intended, very large Indian organisation

with good heart for the game, strong connections with what we want to do with our values at Hampshire.

And I feel as though it is job done and I feel that myself and for all the people that

have been on this journey with me, there's a lot of them.

It is a pad on the back and well done and we move on to the next chapter.

Will it be hard, sort of fully stepping away, come the 20-26 or whatever, will it be hard

to stop this, basically, stop what you're doing after so much you've achieved over the last 25 years?

Well, I'll never be stepping away.

You know, I'm always going to be here in one capacity or another and GMR are very keen

to keep me involved somehow.

But obviously I won't be running it, certainly not formally and sitting at the top of the

pile and everything.

But no, I won't find it too difficult to get away from that.

I've got very, very competent people here that do a fantastic job and I'm not sure that

they've really needed me for the last two or three years, really.

Let's talk about some of the players that you've had at Hampshire over the last 25 years.

Start with the man behind us there, Shane Warn.

Still to real speaking about Shane in the past tense, really, after what happened.

But just your memories of Shane and what he meant for Hampshire and yourself?

Well, it was an amazing journey, really, with Shane.

It was propagated, actually, in a pub in Winchester, not surprisingly, for Hampshire.

And I had Giles White was with me, I think Tim Tremel might have been there, Sean Udall,

Robyn Smith.

And we weren't doing too well at the time, the team wasn't doing too well, the ground

was coming on, OK, but we still weren't winners.

And we just came up with this notion that Shane Warn had played here in the year 2000.

And we just thought, oh, why don't we just get Shane Warn, and make him captain and

bring Paul Terry back as coach, that's the perfect relationship.

And the reason for that relationship was because we know that Warny is very out there and

he doesn't have a very high regard for coaches, he used to say that coaches are only useful

for delivering the players to the ground.

So anyway, Robyn got to know Shane, as I had to a certain extent, he got him to know him

quite well.

And we arranged to meet him in Dubai, where Australia were playing Pakistan in a test series.

And we met there at a golf club, we outlined the plan, and asked him, if he'd be prepared

to lead us into better times and all this kind of thing, and he said absolutely, it'd

be a pleasure to do it.

And we shook hands on a deal, shook hands on a deal with Paul Terry, and we never had

any negotiations after that, I never met Nate, I did meet his agents, actually.

But they never got involved in any discussions with Shane, you know, it's always between him

and me, and we became great friends, and of course, he completely reversed the fortunes

of the club, and actually helped to build a sense of one of the big teams, and gave

us a winning instinct, and a lot of sayings that still live with us now, effort is not

an option.

That's one that you'd like to say sometimes to other teams when you see them play, you

know, effort is not an option for a professional sportsman, it's a given, and those are kind

of things that he would say that resonated throughout the place, and I think they still

linger here today.

And it's legacy with the Shane Warn stand, and even talking about Shane, the influence

he had on Hampshire, getting the eyes on the club, and without Shane, obviously a lot

of this probably wouldn't have been possible, the extra eyes on the club and the extra attention.

Yes, it was huge, I mean, we were benefiting from getting the biggest home crowds for

everybody else that we played, and of course, Shane would stay behind afterwards and sign

everything for everybody, and it irritated some of the other players, sometimes they're

sitting on the bus for three quarters of an hour waiting for Shane to sign everything

that everybody wanted to sign, but that was the measure of the man, yes, he made a massive

difference on and off the pitch, inspired us all, you know, he was just a very inspirational

character.

It wasn't without the odd challenge, you know, we had some issues, there was one occasion

when we were playing Warwickshire at a home game, and the fire alarm went off, and it was

an announcement saying, please leave the building, you know, so everybody was leaving the

pavilion, and I phoned the control room to ask what had happened.

They said, well, we've detected smoke in the home dressing room, I said, oh no, so I had

to go in there and confront Shane Warn, and he was standing there at the back of the dressing

room looking quite guilty, actually, I said, he said to me, what's been going on, what's

the noise?

I said, well, Shane, smoke has been detected in the home dressing room, he said, well,

wasn't me, I said, Shane, you're the only one that smokes, he said, I'm not the only

one that smokes, he said to Irvine, he said, you smoke, don't you, he said, yeah, I smoke

a bit, and he said, just you're new to him, he probably never seen a cigarette, he said,

you smoke, don't you, and he said, yeah, yeah, I smoke, so I said, well, we'll talk about

this later, but later he's still denied it, and he never found out who did it, but he

could assure me that it would never happen again on his watch, so he had a way out of every

problem that he caused, but it was just a thrill to have him here.

And I'm sure he recorded, he left in 2007, four years later, the first test down here at

Utilator Bowl, when you took over, you sort of made a tough decision to say, we're going

to do this, but we can't be member-owned, we need to be our own sort of private equity

to make these tough decisions.

How much does that help having that freedom of not relying on member-owned decisions to

be able to develop the ground, or do stuff your own way to make Hampshire the club it

is today?

Yeah, well, I've got feelings about membership in cricket, I think it's one of the reasons

that the game has been held back so much that so much of the power base of the game

of cricket is held by so few people, and those few people all have one common interest,

which is just to get as much red ball cricket as they can every summer, and not worry about

anything else about the game.

So the fact that we disenfranchise the members, if you like, we re-incorporated the club as

a proper operating business with a board of directors, and we re-designated our members,

which I had to switch back, actually, they'd like being called members, so we gave them

the title back, but what we call them is valued customers, and we look after them as valued

customers.

It increased our necessity to speak to members regularly to make sure they understood the

decisions that we were making and why we were doing it, and in fairness, not all of them

agreed all the time, but what we did do, at least, was to try and explain why we had to

do certain things.

We had lots of discussions with them about the advent of the 100, for instance, and

I think Kevin James from the BBC was interviewing people on the way out of a meeting one night,

and they were just saying, look, we trust Rodney's team to do the right thing for us.

So there was an element of trust there that we were doing the right thing.

They could see what was emerging here.

The team was getting better.

We were challenging on all fronts.

We were inviting international cricket, obviously, not getting enough of it at that time.

But I think the overall feeling was that it's much more manageable when you can make the

right decisions for the right reasons, rather than being held back by people with a particular

bias.

And that's a big problem that the game's suffering from at the moment.

You've got a test coming up next year.

We'll talk about that later, but how hard has it been to sort of break into that traditional

group of test grounds and sort of not disrupts the wrong word?

But you see a lot of comments saying, oh, there's no test in the north in 27, 27, but from

your point of view, you want to get a test as well, and I guess that's just how it

falls.

Yeah, I know.

I heard that one often about no test.

The fact that there was no test south of London for donkeys years seemed to escape people.

Look, the bottom line is, the people that had the test matches didn't want to sacrifice

them because they make a lot of money.

And there's a reason why clubs like Surrey and Warwickshire and others are wealthy clubs.

And it's because they get a lot of test match cricket regularly, you know, guaranteed.

So that was very obvious to us in 2000 when we took over that there was a difference between

the halves and the halves and the halves and the halves.

And the charter by which Sport England, then known as the Lottery's Commission, had given

money to this development, was to develop not only a domestic ground, but an international

ground.

So the die was already cast.

It had to be an international ground.

The problem I had was persuading the ECB to persuade those people that were getting

the money to share it a bit more, and it didn't happen until quite late in the game.

You mentioned there you worry about the halves and halves not.

Do you worry, during forward, you see what's happening with the hundred, the host counties

feeling non-counties that we're still going to have that divide of halves and halves not?

Yes, I'm very worried about it.

And particularly so since the advent of the hundred, I think some of the grounds which the

counties that are living at grounds that don't have either international cricket or the

hundred are severely disadvantaged and they should be helped more.

And I'm not keen on reading that they need to rely less on the ECB.

The ECB actually was set up for them to rely on.

That was the whole intention of the ECB, but it's now become a much bigger organisation

which seems to exist for itself and give the amount of money to the game that the game

needs rather than what the game says it needs.

So I think there's a disconnect there which needs to be reconnected.

I think that those counties that have grounds which cannot at stage these kind of events

need more help from the ECB as a matter of rights.

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It's been some fantastic players that have played here over the years.

You look at Shane, Kevin Peterson, you know, Muhammad Abbas, Carla, but one of the key

things about Hampshire have always been its emphasis on local homegrown talent.

And you only have to look at Chris Wood, Liam Dawson and James Vince.

You had your first finals day here 16 years ago, Hampshire went on to win the trophy.

How proud were you, not only of that, but the fact that you did that with local talent

in the squad as well.

Yeah.

And continue to win trophies with.

That was an amazing run, to be honest, and we had that particular academy outtake,

which included Vince and Wood would also Dawson and Bates and Briggs, and shortly behind.

I think, you know, I thought that would be the backbone of the team for a decade, to

be honest.

But nonetheless, they have contributed hugely to the team.

And it was really exciting to see our run in Whiteball cricket in those years where I

think we were tactically a bit ahead of the rest of the game.

Obviously, the game's developed and more often, it is more competitive now.

But in fact, I think I'm right in saying that all four of those academy graduates played

in the final at Glamorgan a couple of years later, which is probably the only time that

all four of them have appeared in the finals together.

But that was a great testament to that particular academy outtake.

I think we've probably got an academy which is producing equally good players at the moment,

and we're looking forward to seeing the development of those over the next 25 years, but that's

to come.

What we're doing this year is to reflect on this amazing 25 years that we've heard.

Yeah, we'll talk about the ashes of the 2027s.

What would you be feeling when you walk around in 18 months time, whether there's an ashes

test here at Utilator Bowl?

Does it feel like all that hardware, all that effort you've put into Hampshire is sort

of a reward, not only for the club, but for you personally?

Well, I mean, yes, everything that's a reward for me personally, I see as being for the club,

you know, that we're inextrably linked, there's a common goal between us all.

So the things that I'm proud of, the club I hope is proud of, and the things that the club

enjoys, I enjoy.

So yes, the ashes test is like the pinnacle really, it's something which I've fought for

so long, and it was desperately unfair that we didn't land that test match against Australia

in 2023, and to be honest, at that stage, I've got very close to giving up, and that was

the point at which I thought we also need to be raising some more money for this place

because it is 20 odd years old, and it needs some refurbishment, and we need to do new

and different things.

That's when I started going to look for some outside investment.

It wasn't really until we were awarded the ashes test in 2027 that the interest really

started to surface in a big way, particularly from non-UK sources.

You had a significant sale with the GMR group going forward, the future of Hampshire looked

bright off the field in terms of the finances as well, but where do you see cricket going?

Do you think clubs have to be more like your hampshares, your Northamptonshares in terms

of being private equity businesses in order to move forward as a game?

Well, I think it's easier, and we've got experts on a board of directors who can make decisions

based on business decisions rather than emotion or personal bias.

The game is clearly globalising, there's a lot of things you can do in this world when

you see trend changes.

You can try and buck them, you can try and keep hold of what you've got, you can try

to fight like mad to protect Red Bull cricket.

But if you look at the dynamic of the world market, we can all easily see what's happening.

It is happening to a greater extent than it should in many respects, but nonetheless,

the trend is towards globalisation of White Bull cricket, and I just wanted Hampshire

to be a part of that globalisation.

I want this club to be an internationally renowned cricket club with associate teams

in all the other major cricket playing countries, which is what we've taken a massive step towards

with the GMR deal.

Do you see clubs being sort of more part of families like hampshares with GMR that close

link with Dubai capitals, with Delhi and the IPL, do you see cricket becoming more

like that franchise based?

Yes, there's a lot of discussions going on around the world that haven't yet manifest

into transactions.

But I was recently in Australia, and I was spoken to a number of the Australian grounds

there who were talking, the Australian states are talking about privatisation now with

the big bash and looking at outside money, and then they're talking to English clubs

and to other clubs around the world about how they can globalise their business.

So I think it's actually an inevitability, it's just a question of timing.

Just finally, you look back, there's been so many changes in the game from 2001, who

would have fought 25 later, there'd be a hundred ball tournament here with a complete

Lutheran team other than hampsha.

But take us back 25 years, and if you look back now, what would you have done differently

or I know it's easy looking hindsight, I could have done this, I could have done that.

But when you sit down at the end of the day, yeah, what do you feel?

Wow.

I feel as a given the hand that we had, we've done the very best that we could here.

I'm disappointed that I could never really sort of improve the national governing body.

I could never get through to enough people, enough of the county chairs to say, look,

we can change this, but we all have to agree on a change.

And that's what ECB knows is the weakness in the constitution of English cricket, that

we can never garner enough support to say, look, this isn't good enough.

All of that money has to go out to the counties.

And I feel as probably failed in that respect that we had a golden moment, we had a review

of our governance, which suggested that the board did act in a vacuum, and it wasn't overseen

by anybody, and they made proposals for that, but at which we're introduced at the time

that has subsequently been dropped.

So that's, I guess, where I think probably I've failed, and it's going to be a very difficult

ask for anybody else to do it.

But I do know that the game can change itself if everybody comes together to make that

change.

Why do you think they can't, then, is it just the case of just outside cricket in general,

people like tradition, people like being comfortable, is it the case of you have to be

unpopular at times for the greater good of the game?

Well, that is true, but I don't think this particular issue is one of that.

It's more of the fact that the governing body has grown its own image, it's got its own

self image, it believes that it's the source of all good, and I don't think it's necessarily

trusting its constituents to get on with their business and giving them the financial

assistance that it will actually set up to do.

When I hear people saying that they need to create a business plan which doesn't rely

so much on the ECB distributions, I always say, why?

That is exactly what the ECB was set up to do.

Not every ground can put on big concerts or host international at 100 matches.

Should those counties really be disadvantaged or even more taken over by ECB just because

their business model didn't work?

There's a reason why the business model didn't work, there wasn't enough income.

The question is, should more of that income have been coming from the ECB?

Thanks as always to Rod for his time there, and don't forget to stay tuned to the following

on podcast feed later this week, we'll have the usual weekly show with Neil Manfall

and Steve Armasson looking back at all the hundred action and also they'll be joined

by the Leicestershire head coach Alfonso Thomas, plus later this week we'll head down

to the Kia Oval Surrey to speak to some of their players head of the start of the county

championship season, plus we'll have an exclusive interview with a new Sri Lanka head coach

Gary Kirsten as well.

So plenty to come on the following on podcast feed and as always head over to the Torchport

Cricket YouTube channel and subscribe so you don't miss out on any of our content.

Not for now, this has been following on.

Okay, seven stops to write this best man's speech.

Hi, I'm Liam and I've got nothing.

Stop funny, when he's good, I beat her, he'd never forgive me.

What about friendship is a journey?

Crint, come on, that's it.

In year five, Dan had the bright idea, tracking the best, best man's speech on the train

you can.

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