England Cricket Board (ECB) are estimating a mammoth loss of £380million if the entire cricket season needs to be cancelled due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. Speaking at the Digital, Culture, Media, and Sports select committee the board’s chief executive Tom Harrison said that English cricket is facing ‘the most significant financial challenge’ till date.
Projecting the grim economical reality of the situation Harrison urged the need to attempt to play some cricket over the year saying: “Our ability to mitigate the potential financial impact does require us to try, where it’s safe to do so and with government support, fill that hole. We are staring at a £100million-plus loss this year, whatever happens”.
“We anticipate that with no cricket this year – as a worst-case scenario for our planning purposes – that could be as bad as £380million. That would be the loss of 800 days of cricket across all our professional clubs and the ECB as well,” he was quoted saying by the Cricketer.
The chief executive further threw light on the devastating impact of the crisis on the game in England. “We came into 2020 in the best financial state that county cricket had been in for several decades, frankly, and this has thrown that into some uncertainty,” he said. “We will continue to work with the counties to make sure we get through this. We’re going to have to take a good look, as football has, at our cost base because that is clearly an issue which we had to address now and one that cricket has had to for a long time” he added.
The ECB has already taken various measures to help cricket survive the pandemic which includes a £61million rescue package for 18 county teams in England’s first-class cricket structure. Further, the governing body is also giving grants and loans for recreational clubs. Harrison also said that the postponed ‘The Hundred’ would have helped the board earn a profit of £11 million this year.
The tournament ‘s inaugural edition was postponed to 2021.
