the
manager
AUTUMN 2011
LEADERS
THE
Hugh Morris
WITH ENGLAND AT THE TOP OF THE INTERNATIONAL TEST CRICKET RANKINGS, WE TALK TO THE ECB’S
MANAGING DIRECTOR ABOUT HOW THEY GOT THERE AND WHERE THEY GO FROM HERE
WORDS
CIARÁN BRENNAN
ENGLAND HAS
the best team in the
world... it’s a matter of fact. Tis fact,
of course, doesn’t apply to the football
team, but to their counterparts
in cricket, whose accomplished
performances over the summer have
propelled them to the top of the ICC
test rankings for the frst time.
Impressive as this is, it’s even
more noteworthy when viewed in
the context of where English cricket
was just over a decade ago. Back in
the summer of 1999, English cricket
hit an all-time low when defeat to
New Zealand left the country at the
bottom of the world test rankings,
below Zimbabwe and seemingly
playing a diferent game to the
then-dominant Australians.
Hugh Morris, the managing
director of England cricket, has
experienced every moment of the
roller-coaster ride that has seen the
national team rise from that late
1990s low to the current peak (with
a few bumps along the way).
Morris joined the ECB in
November 1997 after a 17-year
playing career which saw him play
three times for England. He assumed
his current role in the wake of the
ECB’s most recent restructure, which
was brought about by England’s 5-0
defeat to Australia in the 2007 Ashes.
Painful as that setback was, it proved
to be little more than a blip in an
international success story that has
been gathering momentum since 2004
(and includes victories in three of the
last four Ashes series).
Much of the foundation for
England’s current success, Morris
believes, is down to the improvements
to the development of England’s elite
coaches, which were put in place at
the beginning of this century. One
of Morris’s frst tasks on joining the
ECB was to review the organisation’s
junior development programme. “Te
coaching scheme that we had at that
time had hardly changed in almost 50
years,” he says, “and we wondered why
we weren’t producing quality coaches.”
England’s cricket now has a tiered
coaching structure, from ‘level one’
elite coaching needs constant
monitoring and updating. “What we
don’t want is for coaches to get to
level four and stop at that,” he says,
“so we’ve put in place a continual
professional development programme.
Tis involves bringing small groups
together for regular workshops and
then, once a year, bringing everybody
who has graduated through the level
four programme together for a three-
day conference.”
Te ECB’s coaching scheme also
ensures that each coach who goes
through the level four programme has
access to an experienced and qualifed
mentor, further ensuring that they
emerge with all requisite skills and
knowledge of best coaching practice.
But it’s not just the coaching
structure that’s changed; the ECB has
also made changes to the game which
Morris believes have contributed to
the national team’s success. “At junior
level we shorten the pitch and use
smaller balls,” he says. “Twenty20
cricket has been a really important
development tool as well; not only do
we get a lot of kids into our grounds,
it’s also a really vibrant game in
schools and at grass roots level.”
Morris’s role can, in some respects,
be compared to that of a director
of football within a professional
football club. Tere has been a marked
resistance to that role within English
club football, but Morris hasn’t
encountered any similar reservations
within the cricket community.
“My role is very much a strategic
one,” he says. “Like a lot of
organisations we plan in four-year
“Like a lot of
organisations
we plan in
four-year
cycles and I’m
responsible
for driving
that process
forward’”
coaches who work with children
at grass roots level up to the ‘level
four’ coaches who work with the
elite players in the county and
international games. Te ECB’s
elite coaching programme has, in
the past 10 years, produced more
than 100 level four qualifed coaches,
including the current England team
director, Andy Flower.
But while he’s happy with the
results to date, Morris knows that