“Our vision, and it is an ambitious one, is of Leicestershire becoming the most successful non-international cricket club within the next five years,” says Wasim Khan, three months into his new job as chief executive at Grace Road. “There is no reason why we can’t. But we start from a low base.”
Ambitious is certainly the right word and that low base is undeniable. Leicestershire, who open their County Championship campaign at home to Glamorgan on Sunday 12 April, have appeared something of a lost cause recently, going winless in Division Two for the past two seasons and recently announcing a loss of £225,153 for 2014.
So why would a successful 44-year-old cricketer-turned-businessman, awarded an MBE in 2013 for services to cricket and the community, leave a thriving £50m charity such as the Cricket Foundation – which drives the Chance to Shine campaign that has taken the sport into 11,000 state schools since 2005 – to take on such a project?
“It was about timing. I’d just completed an MBA at Warwick University and we’d achieved our 10-year objectives at the charity – in eight-and-half years,” he replies. “When I started at Chance to Shine people were saying it just wouldn’t work and I wanted to prove them wrong. Leicestershire presented a similar challenge. It can hopefully only go one way.”
Khan’s first task upon arrival was to perform a handbrake turn on the mindset at the club, who won their third Twenty20 title as recently as 2011 but whose last victory in the Championship came the following September.
“There was an acceptance – a self-fulfilling prophecy – of people saying we’re not very good,” he reveals. “The language being used needed to change. It was very downbeat, on and off the field, and I insisted it would no longer be accepted.
“We sat down as a club, players, staff, everyone and drew up our values and our goals. And there has been a real culture shift. People are being proactive, taking responsibility and thinking: ‘What can I do?’ rather than moaning. My job is to give proper leadership and direction.”
To freshen things up on the field, Khan has brought in the Australians Mark Cosgrove as captain, Andrew McDonald as coach and Clint McKay as overseas professional, while the New Zealander Grant Elliott, star of the recent World Cup, will join for the Twenty20 campaign. “Andrew McDonald is an exceptional individual,” says Khan. “When I sought advice, the people I spoke to put him on par with when Jason Gillespie started at Yorkshire. He has lots of energy, knows the club and has a fantastic cricket brain. And Mark gives us stability and experience with a proven record of scoring runs at first-class level. Other clubs have expressed their annoyance at our signing him. He plays with no fear and will take others with him.”
Getting 11 cricketers to start delivering on the field would be something. But a greater challenge lies in making the club sustainable financially and less reliant on the £1.8m annual handouts from the England and Wales Cricket Board. The key, Khan believes, is strengthening Leicestershire’s ties within the community. As an opening gambit, that first Sunday of the season will see Grace Road opened up to the public for free, with 1,000 households in the LE2 postcode personally invited to attend a family-orientated day.
As the first British-Asian to take such a high-ranking position in English cricket, Khan accepts interest will be shown in how he gets the club to engage with such a multicultural city as Leicester, and its South Asian community in particular.
“I’ve always been vocal in saying cricket hasn’t engaged properly with the South Asian community from the recreational or business point of view,” he insists. “You can’t just expect the Asian cricket community to bring money into English cricket simply because they are passionate about the sport. We lack diversity in terms of women and people from other backgrounds. We acknowledge it but don’t do much about it. That’s certainly something at Leicestershire I intend to change.”
To that end, Khan has already had positive meetings with 20 inner-city clubs – drawn from Asian and Caribbean backgrounds – to find out where Leicestershire has been failing them. He also challenged them about what they intend to put back into the county’s cricket. “I think that’s important and possibly I can say that a lot easier,” he admits.
Khan will also tackle the need for greater diversity at board level. “We are a members-only club and 99% are from a certain background and a certain age. And only members can get voted on to the main board. That creates an issue. We are looking at our constitution and what we do with it, to make it more open and bring in different types of people that can only add great value.
“Everything we do has to be relevant and make us more sustainable, 365 days a year. That’s my vision. I think we can turn this club around and it will be my biggest achievement,” he adds. It’s hard not to wish both him and the team well.
