Not so long ago someone put a plastic turd in an envelope and posted it to Tom Harrison at the England and Wales Cricket Board. Think of it as a parting gift from the disaffected of English cricket, to go with Harrison’s share of the £2.1m in executive bonuses the ECB paid out this year. Harrison, who has a background in sales and marketing, is someone who imagines he would be able to win anyone over if they would only sit down and listen to him for 15 minutes one-on-one over a coffee. He seemed utterly nonplussed to discover there are people beyond the four walls of ECB headquarters who might feel differently about it.
The media release announcing Harrison’s farewell as the ECB chief executive ran to just under 1,000 words and you can’t but wonder how much of it was his own work. It was half as long again as the one issued when Joe Root stepped down as England captain last month after a record number of Tests.
