Leading executives at the ECB are expected to share a £2.1m bonus next year, according to newspaper reports, despite job losses in the organisation tied to the pandemic.
Tom Harrison, the chief executive of the ECB, and Sanjay Patel, managing director of the Hundred, are named in The Guardian as among those who will benefit from a five-year Long-Term Incentive Plan (LTIP) set up in 2017.
The Plan was set up under the ECB’s previous chairman Colin Graves. There are claims that there is no link between its quantities and the relative success of the Hundred’s inaugural season. It was instead described as a “retention tool for key senior leaders” designed to reward the growth of both the ECB and the game it governs.
The decision to continue with the LTIP is reported to have been made last November by the current ECB chairman Ian Watmore and his remuneration committee, just two months after 20% of the body’s workforce was cut due to Covid-19’s financial impact.That contributed to the ECB’s £16.5m loss in 2020-21. The sport in its entirety is reported to have lost £100million.
Harrison did take a pay cut last year, but still earned £512,000. The ECB is also benfitting from its £1.1bn broadcast deal and the Inspiring Generations strategy, two concepts driven by the Hundred and its substantial marketing reach that aims to seek out newcomers to the sport.
Although schemes like this LTIP are relatively common in large organisations, Watmore was quoted as saying. But the decision to continue as planned with it given the public nature of substantial job losses, the financial damage the game has suffered from and the debatable “success” enjoyed by Harrison and the body over the past two years will leave some uneasy.
