“There’s a real heartbeat of cricket that it’s our duty to tap into,” says new chief executive Dan Feist
Andrew Miller11-Mar-2025English cricket is rife with new realities as the 2025 season dawns. The success of the Hundred equity sale means that county cricket will soon be awash with untold (albeit one-off) riches, but for some clubs, the implications of a lower-profile but no less significant carve-up are already being felt.In April last year, the ECB embarked on its reboot of the women’s domestic structure by announcing the winning bids for eight professional Tier 1 county set-ups. And, while gender equality had never previously counted for much in England’s domestic circles, the outpouring of reaction from the bid’s winners and losers confirmed that, for several disorientated counties, this process had been their best shot at a renewed sense of purpose.Nowhere has this been more obvious than at Chelmsford – or the Ambassador Cruise Line Ground, as Essex’s HQ will now grandiloquently be known when it plays host to 30 men’s and women’s county fixtures (plus four representative games) in the course of a bumper 2025.In February, that new naming-rights deal was unveiled on board Ambassador’s flagship Ambience, which had just arrived back at Tilbury Docks from the Caribbean and was due to set sail that evening for the Northern Lights. As metaphors go, this one was full steam ahead for the club’s new journey.Related
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Dan Feist, Essex’s new chief executive, is keenly aware of the role the women’s announcement played in securing this deal. “It has raised the profile of the region, and our opportunity within it, as well as doubling the number of activation days at the ground,” he tells ESPNcricinfo. “We understand that we’ve got a huge geographical reach in the East of England, in terms of businesses on our doorstep and the sheer weight of population. There’s a real heartbeat of cricket that it’s our duty to tap into.”There’ll be pressures in the season ahead, not least on the Chelmsford groundstaff, but the speed with which the mood at the club has changed is astonishing. In July last year, Essex was still in the throes of perpetual crisis. With further penalties looming from the Cricket Discipline Commission, at the conclusion of a long investigation into historic racism claims, the club embarked on a management restructuring that included the resignation of Feist’s predecessor John Stephenson, and the discontinuation of his role. Though that move was not directly connected to the CDC’s findings, the inference at the time was that a club as financially battered as Essex could not afford to carry on paying for a traditional chief executive.How different things look now – and not simply because Essex, as a partner club of the Hundred’s most valued brand, London Spirit, are due their share of a cool £144 million as and when MCC and their tech consortium bedfellows have worked out the finer details of their new arrangement.Last month, Feist stepped officially into Stephenson’s shoes as Essex’s CEO, having previously overseen the club’s day-to-day operations as general manager, while Chris Silverwood has also returned to the club as director of cricket, eight years after his transformational stint as men’s head coach.On the women’s side, Andy Tennant – the former head coach of regional team Sunrisers – came across to Chelmsford in October, along with 14 of the 16 players who featured in last season’s Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy and Charlotte Edwards Cup. And for all that the Hundred’s machinations have reinforced the sense that Essex are lightweights on the London scene compared to their richer neighbours at Lord’s and The Oval, the club’s new brains trust are confident that their traditional homespun strengths can meet the new realities head-on.”Essex’s success has always been built around developing our own players,” Feist says, with some justification. When, in 2017, Essex landed their first County Championship title for 25 years, four of their first XI were born in the same Whipps Cross hospital as the grandee of Chelmsford grandees, Graham Gooch. “The teams that create the best pathway for players tend to be the most successful.”Silverwood was widely credited for reinvigorating those pathways during his first stint as coach, and it was a point he leant back into ahead of his comeback season. “We have to be smart,” Silverwood says. “We’re not going to compete on the money front, but we can be good at what we do. We’re bringing people through that pipeline all the time, and if we can create an over-supply of good cricketers, we get to pick the cream of the crop.”If people go on and make a good career somewhere else, that’s brilliant as well. That doesn’t worry me, as long as we are producing good Essex boys and girls to come and play for Essex.”Essex coach Chris Silverwood poses with fans in 2017•Getty ImagesThis recognition of the club’s place in England’s pecking order could be the remaking of Essex. For all of the success of the Hundred in promoting the women’s game and, as of now, replenishing the sport’s coffers, the relative emptiness of that edifice has arguably been seen in England’s recent performances, across genders.The men’s hapless displays at the Champions Trophy betrayed their lack of familiarity with a format that none of the elite players ever play domestically, while the women’s desperate failures at the T20 World Cup and the Ashes are a warning that – despite the exposure the top players have received in recent years – the women’s game will lack robustness until there’s sufficient pressure for places from a broader base of credible challengers on the domestic circuit.”The wider you can build the pyramid, the higher that has the potential to go,” Tennant says. “We want to be the best player development program in England, and we almost have to build that trading model, because we don’t have the riches of some of the Test venues. But we’re confident that we can punch above our weight and be competitive at the top end of the game.”Essex certainly has the remit to be competitive. As Feist acknowledges, they share a geographical advantage with Somerset and Durham – two other clubs that have been granted Tier 1 women’s status but are not Hundred-hosting venues – in that their catchment area extends into swathes of the country, in this case East Anglia, that are not served by any other first-class county.But there’s the East London factor too – perhaps most keenly felt two summers ago when huge numbers of Bangladeshi fans made the 30-minute journey from Tower Hamlets (and beyond) to attend three sell-out ODIs against Ireland.Essex have been in conversations about similar initiatives in the future, particularly in the lead-up to next year’s Women’s World Cup, and also plan on creating a more dedicated East London supporters’ group to firm up that connection. There is, however, a keen recognition of the need to stay grounded, particularly when it comes to the limitations of a compact venue such as Chelmsford.Bangladesh’s fans get into the spirit of the occasion at Chelmsford•Cricket IrelandWhereas other comparable counties, most notably Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, are assessing their options when it comes to relocation, Feist is confident about leaning into the existing strengths of their existing 5,000-seater home – the smallest on the county circuit, even if it could conceivably be stretched to 10,000 capacity by 2030 if their plans for a redeveloped pavilion can come to fruition.”Chelmsford is our preferred option of where we want to stay,” Feist says. “The benefit here is that we’ve got very limited competitors for the facilities at our ground, whereas if we moved and ended up in the middle of nowhere, it’s quite hard to then get a secondary income. Cricket grounds can sit there empty like white elephants for a while, so we’ve got to make sure our venue is two-way facing, community focused, and representing the region it’s based in.”In cricket, it’s only really the Utilita Bowl [Hampshire] and the Riverside [Durham] that have successfully moved, but they’ve both had their challenges to be financially sustainable, and some of the football clubs have had the same struggles.”You have to be really clear about your business model in the landscape of sport. Whether it’s Brighton or Brentford, or the difference between Bath and Saracens, it’s about knowing your role and how to make the most of it to be successful.”In the short term, however, the excitement for the new season trumps any such long-term considerations – and Essex’s women’s set-up epitomises this mood change. For them, the chance to put down even the most exploratory of roots will be a step up from their previous nomadic experience at Sunrisers. Throughout their five seasons, Chelmsford still hosted more than half their games, but the team’s primary affiliation to Middlesex meant they were only ever passing through.”The regional model was good and of its time, but you did feel as if you were representing everyone and no-one at the same time,” Tennant says. “Having a headquarters will be gold-dust. We’ll be going somewhere that the girls know as their place of work, which is quite powerful, and the fortress Chelmsford moniker is live, isn’t it? It’s a great venue for women’s cricket. It’s a really good size. We’re looking forward to making it into our fortress too.”
