Under The Lid - Inside Pro Cricket Podcast
The Players' Voice – Under The Lid With James Harris
Join Jack Brooks and Katherine Sciver-Brunt for Under The Lid - Inside Pro Cricket Podcast - with special guest, Glamorgan cricketer and PCA chairman James Harris.
James talks through his role as the chair of the PCA, from leaving a legacy to the future of cricket, as well as his going in-depth on his own playing career.
Tell us what you think using the #UnderTheLid hashtag on socials or email hello@underthelid.co.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Duration:
- 59m
- Broadcast on:
- 25 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
(upbeat music) - You know I'm going to get that, Steven Sin. - I'll count my lucky ticket. - In the tavern for lunchtime, perfect. - But with a poorly bottom. - We bought a racehorse a couple of years ago from Jeremy Kyle. - Our saw was your bottom. - Slightly annoying, but I didn't let room be there. (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Under Lid, the pro cricket show with me, Jack Brooks. - And me, Catherine, as of a Brunt. - As always, this podcast is brought to you in partnership with the cricketer and the PCA. And this is an extra special episode as we have our boss, if you like, in for a chat as our special guest, which we'll come to in a moment. But how are you, Brunt, you survived, Lords? - Just about. That was a whirlwind of a three days, not five. I like to get the job done, don't I? But yeah, since then, I've had a great time at home but with a poorly bottom. - Nice, moving on, next. - I think you've sent that gastro stuff all the way over to Lee's Midland. So I've been pretty, I've been, I'm still struggling to be fair. That's why I look a little bit like deaf. - Look great, mate. - Deaf warmed up. But I've had to send Natalie off on Friday morning to Danny White's Hindu in a full blown cowgirl outfit. I can see a horrible plastic crocodile skinned cowgirl boots to my left. So that was all the videos and pictures from that looked like they had a great time. - Can you just turn as well? - I'll tune into the game. And as soon as I've turned it on, you're in a commentary box chatting calf straight away. So the volume went up. And then you dropped in that you went to the wrong ground, literally having spoken to you that day where we did a podcast record and you still went to the wrong ground. - I'm ashamed. That was obviously my second stint at Lourdes. So I had a great week at the test. And then my next one was at Lourdes. But the following week, I'm like, I'm at the oval tomorrow. And then two days after that, I think I'm at the oval again. So I was like, I'm at the oval today. So I was just, and I was really proud of myself 'cause I'm getting used to the underground now and like my roots and Northern lines and Victoria lines and everything. And I was making my way there like, oh, I've really got this down packed. And I can see the oval coming up like five stops away and there had already been on a bit. And then I was like, what? Oval today, not like, I'm not at the oval today. (beep) And then I had to jump, luckily the very literally as I thought that we'd just stopped at London Bridge who popped off on the Dukely line. And that was the end of that. But it did, it was slightly annoying. But I didn't let room today. - That's comedy gold mate. - I did get ripped shreds for that though. And I was very hot and bothered. And it was a very hot, it's been very, very hot for the last few days. - Yeah, it's glorious, isn't it? - Can't say I'm enjoying. - How have you managed your cricket in the blistering? - Cricket, not some bad. It's just having a baby in that heat is tough, try and keep them cool. Especially at night, it's obviously makes sleeping tough, but you know, is what it is, isn't it? Another challenging, sad imperative. Had a couple of days coaching last week, one day was sorry at finals day at Wormsley. Unfortunately, we lost in the semi straight away. - Oh, no. - Around a little while to watch a bit of the final. Some are sitting Yorkshire both there and a few people I knew were watching, so it was good to sort of socialise for a bit. Did a day with Saka as well, but the South Asian cricket academy, who they got a game on Thursday at Portland Road against Warrickshire, sort of 50 over friendly, if you like. So that was good. Another one of their Saka lads has been signed as well, so that takes up to nothing like nine or ten now. Saka lads have had pro contracts in the last three years. Ishaam Khan is the latest one who was to have signed for the 50 over comp. So another good story there. Yeah, it's been a fantastic initiative, isn't it? And just at home, just sort of filling a skip. So I've got loads of crap in the garage, I need to sort of, sort of swing out my garage. Yeah, not exciting. - Are you trying to get a gym built like me? - There's already a few stuff. And I could probably do a little bit more equipment, but it's more just, so it gets my misses off my couch 'cause it's an absolute (beep) sound in there. Apparently. - There's always a look that needs to be done. - Always. - Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all good. Shall we move on to our guest? What do we know about him? - Yes, let's do that for sure. Well, Cricket is always, you know, in the news for what's happening on the field. But this week, we're gonna go a little bit deeper, still a cricketer mind. Let's not forget that first and foremost. But obviously, this guest this week is heavily involved in the PCA and really knows a lot about what goes on behind the scenes, away from the cameras. Obviously knows a lot about the scheduling, which we've had obviously lots of grumblings about. I think we've talked about it weekly, don't we? And then if we're able to fill us in on the expansion of the women's game, along with everything else that's going on. So yeah, I can't really wait to get this one on 'cause I think we're gonna touch on loads of stuff that we do weekly, but don't really get like answers about. So it's gonna be great to finally get to the crux. - Proper under the lid with him. There's probably not many people who would know as much what's going on as our guests. As a player though, seriously, Talbot has been around for a bloody long time. I think he manages debut when he's about nine for Glamorgan. He's younger than me, but played for a lot longer. But our careers have sort of intertwined a little bit and we've played against each other a lot. Had the pleasure of spending a few winters with him in England Lions programs and tours. One of the great men in the game. He's played for Glamorgan, Middlesex now, back to Glamorgan. As I said, England Lions, he went on an England ODI tour, I believe, to New Zealand once a few years ago as well. Got very close to playing for England. But for the last couple of years, I'd potentially as big as achievement. Certainly, off field, he's been chairman of the PCA since 2021. So that is what we want to tap into him though, mainly. So should we get our chairman, the esteemed James Harris, into under the lid for a chat? Good morning, both. Good morning for a change. It's normally good. Yeah, no, it's nice. I'm a morning person, which is nice to do in the morning. I mean, my last sort of in the house, we sort of turned it into a bit of an office. It doesn't look quite as good on camera, really. You can't see the rest of the room behind me. But hey, you two are pros of this. Now, how many one number podcast is this? How many of you have done? That's a very good question. 16 or 17, I think. We're at the halfway. I've been, I've been great hands. Have you been listening? Yeah, but listen to a few. I've been doing a fair bit of driving. As you've got some little play cricket, you drive around a fair amount around the country. So, yeah, I've always got it on in the car amongst various other things. But yeah, it's been really good. You all done. You guys have done really well. Thank you very much. We've had a bit of feedback, actually. I've had some people say they've quite enjoyed the Ravi and the OHD one. So, yeah. It's Cookie's little black book. It's still my favourite. My favourite book. That's mine. That's very good. It's a belter, isn't it? How old are you now, I can't raise you. They're mid-30s, aren't you? Well, my hair's kind of fallen out slash. I've cut it all off. Probably 34, yeah, capital. 35 now, yeah. So, I've cut it a bit off. Can you make it debut? 16th. I was, it was a week before my 17th birthday. So, Trent Bridge 2007. I made, I played the year before, just as T20 was sort of going into day-night cricket, there was a few counties around the place with thud lights. So, I think there was four, there was sort of four counties played in the little sort of round robinny day-nighty, T20 comp, 2006. So, I played one of those when I was sort of 16. And then, first class game in 2017, I just performed with 17th birthday. Long time ago, mate. You've been around the block, haven't you? You've seen it all? Yeah, look, yeah, you could say that. I mean, it feels like a different lifetime ago. You see people come through academies and stuff now. It's sort of 1920, and I'd already had two or three, four seasons. I mean, I left Morgan at 22 to go to Middlesex and, you know, having had, you know, quite a few four seasons. We went away on some lion's trips, went away on some fast bowling camps, sort of as you alluded to in the intro a bit, but it feels like a different lifetime. It's up, so I won't know, let's be honest. Wow, some of them were. Some of them were seriously. Yeah, there was a lot of, we had some fun. There was some fun bits, definitely. There was a lot of training. There was a lot of early gym sessions and various things along the way, but we tried to have some fun. But yeah, it feels like a long time now. This is season number 19, I think, some of that, so. Yeah, yeah, it's played a massive part of my life. And plenty more mileage to come, yeah, mate. I know we do talk briefly the other week about potential steps outside of the game. Yeah, I've taken some interesting turns and that over the last couple of years, none more so than at the moment. I started a chiropractic degree, which I told you about in the middle of January. So, that'll take way too long of it. More time that we've got on this podcast to talk about why and what I'm gonna do. But it's quite a specific sort of form of chiropractic I'll do and I hope to do and qualify for when I finish. But yeah, I wanna play for a bit more, yeah. I don't feel like I'm quite done. So, yeah, I'm still not, I'm still doing the rehab and not hating it to a point where I wanna stop. So, that normally says that you've got a bit left. Is the chiropractic thing linked to anything specific? Like, is it become a bit of a passion because you want to try and fix things related to specifically cricket or to try and work out what correlates between the two 'cause there's not much there on cricket and how to sort of, it's a unique thing, isn't it? All those actions are absolutely feral. - Absolutely. - It's not a good thing. - This started, Colin Ingram was one of my teammates, Mackle Morgan turned up when I went back to Glamy from Middlesex in a set of sort of Befertues instead of Evo Beferts. And this was before they were kind of as popular as they are now. This was a couple of years ago. So, I asked him about it, quizzed him on it. He mentioned a friend of his who's a chiropractor who's done a huge amount of work with him and kept his career going. He thought that four or five years ago, he was nearly done. I went to go and see him on the fact that I understand that I've spent the last 20, 25 years of my life trying to bowl reasonably swiftly and know how bad that is from my body. So, I was scared that when I get to 40, 50, 60, I'd older that I'd be in a bit of trouble. So, I kind of went to see him on that basis and he did some things now that's really helped. I used to have this like sort of chronic side strain that was always the first thing to go. When I'd bowl too much, that would always be something in my side really high up sort of around the back. That would always be the first thing or we could never get rid of it no matter what gym sessions I did and all that. So, I went to see Steve, which is gentleman in London and you know, after a few sessions that gone, that's gone and that's never come back. And I haven't had that for three or four years, which kind of sort of sparked my interest in this. And I went for more and more treatments, started feeling better, posture starts improving. And then he randomly at the blue, I was going down the route of doing some financial advice, qualification, this one room where I was going to do coming out of the game and he floated it past me about doing it. And I thought, Chief, that's going to be a hard slog. It's pretty hard to do a medical degree the best of times that alone when you've, I just got a little girl now, like Bruxy, so we've got a young little girl in the house and trying to do this job as a chair of the PCA, trying to play, you know, I thought, Chief, that's how am I going to fit that in. So, we're sort of managing to make it work. So, I've started part-time in January. There's a lot of stuff going on. I've sort of made it work so far for, yeah, it's going to be a sort of five-year slog to try and get to the end of it and juggle some bits. - Mate, that's serious to work with. - Nothing worth doing or having a passion for comes easy, does it? It's always hard work, but worth it in the end. So, I hope that works out for you, James. It sounds great. I love that you've like related that and you want to sort of help that in your own way. So, that's great. I love that. Shall we move on to the PCA role that you have? I'm sure you'll be happy about. 'Cause there's a lot to delve into. Just for our listeners who don't really know what the PCA is, Professional Quickies Association, what's their role and yours, I guess, in the game? - So, I've got mine first. So, I mean, my role as sort of chairman of the PCA is essentially just to be the player's voice and to voice that as loud as humanly possible for the what they want at the ECB, in the press, everything else, to sort of be a de facto sport, spoke to us in my supposed to make sure that the player's voice is being heard and that when important decisions are being made that we have a seat at the table. Really, and this follows in a line of some, I've been very lucky to follow in a line of some great people who've done this role before. It's kind of voted in by the rest of the players. So, anybody who is interested when the role comes up can put us a little manifesto together with the direction they think the game should go. And then the players at all the counties and the women's regions as it is now all have a vote, really. And then you get kind of voted on on that basis. And you can do two, it's a two-year term. You can do two two-year terms of which I'm gonna come to the end to roughly at the start of this year and into the beginning of next. And that's the end of it, then that's the most for me. So, it'll be me passing it on to kind of whoever is the next person who'd like to take it forward. It's been a fascinating couple of years. I know we'll talk about a few things now, but just trying to understand the crux of how the game works, all the decisions that have to be made and all the things that have to put in place before, we all would have turned up a couple of grounds and things just work. And you start on time at 11 o'clock or whatever time the game starts. It's quite fascinating the conversations that have to happen behind the scenes. - Yes, sounds, I mean, I've been on a couple of bars myself now and there's a lot to find out and a lot of head scratching to do. So, yeah, I mean, it will probably be in quite a, like quite a, not fact finding time, but like a very, probably frustrating too, 'cause you're, they're representing the players and, you know, that you're the players player that they put forward and you've got to try and sort all this out for them and be the voice for them and it can be quite frustrating, isn't it, when you have to go to, I don't know, through several, several months and stuff to just sort out one issue, like, that must be one of the most frustrating. - Yeah, it is, I mean, look, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things to it. I mean, you know, you're always trying to negotiate with, you know, we've kind of got three parties relatively and we've got the buses, the players, the ECB and the counties and the women's regions who obviously now will transition to be part of the sort of counties as well. I suppose from next year and kind of going forward with the new tiered system in the women's game, trying to negotiate that, trying to get all everybody on the same page, trying to make everybody see things from a sort of playing side, which, you know, if you don't shout loud enough about these things from a player's side, things get lost. I mean, you touched on the schedule already. You know, it's very easy if we didn't have much of a voice or we weren't aligned on certain things for that bit to get lost, right? And there are players, male and female doing, you know, things that they shouldn't be doing. There are drives being undertaken at ridiculous times in the night after games and going home and having to wake up and get to bed at one in the morning and wake up and play another game that night and all sorts of things. So there's a lot of things to sort. It is frustrating at times because you want to shake some people and make them trying to see how the whole thing works from your side, I'm sure. You know, the people sat in the offices and making decisions, we want to see, you know, us to see their side sometimes and how they have to keep sponsors and various things happy. But ultimately without the players, there isn't a game. And then we need to make sure that the players have, you know, within reason, the best possible working conditions and everything else that they possibly can. So, yeah, I'll keep fighting hyper roller. - Yeah, because obviously in injuries, they need to be prevented, not rehabbed, like, prehab is more important than rehab. So it's like, how do we keep our very best players entertaining people? 'Cause if they're not, it is a fact that we do, you do lose numbers, you do lose bombs on seats. So you got protect people first and foremost. And for many years, like, like, I'll just take that for instance, you want to get her to 35 having played 20, 15, 20 years for England. You want to get the most out, your asset, you know what I mean? It is funny, like looking at it from a business perspective, 'cause we're humans. But it is a business. There is money involved, is entertainment product. And yeah, it's hard to be human and, especially when you're governed by the money from, sorry, from, you know, Sky BBC, people like that have got what that's called. Something writes, yeah, they control it a lot, don't they? So the wiggle room in the schedule is so hard because you're determined by how much you've sold to them, et cetera. - Massively, that's a huge part of all this, right? 'Cause, you know, without that money coming into the game, the game doesn't function itself, right? You don't have the players. You don't have, you know, the talent pool. You don't have the resources. You don't have the number of coaches you need and the facilities and everything else, which we need to continually keep investing in. So there is a massive negotiation point to be had on this. You know, from a men's side at the moment, the schedule is so congested. You know, we're trying to try and smooth that out somewhat. You know, it's come out a little bit as we might need to get rid of the odd game here or there. And I'm having arguments with, you know, members on the boundary about, you know, back in the day, whatever they used to play through the odd three-day games, they used to travel, you know, they'd play a couple of days and they'd travel halfway across the country, play on a Sunday league game, travel back to fish, whatever first-class game they were playing. And that's all absolutely right, but it doesn't mean it was the best way to do things. You know, it was a very different game back then. And it's evolving all the time. And I might kind of personally, the use you can't... Oh, it's very hard to compare between eras, right? The era that played 20, 30 years ago was very different. The era that we're playing now is very different to that. And the era that I'm going to finish up in very soon, and the kind of the three of us, I suppose, have gone through, is going to be very different the era in 20 years time. With, you know, what's going on, the money involved, the pressures, social media pressures, you know, the things that, you know, are cool, kind of a vault-to-art time playing, I suppose. You know, every ball that's bold now in the male or female cricket, you know, first-team level is on camera. What that then means is that everyone's watching, and everyone's pouring into that, into information, into stats, into who plays this well, who plays that well, how many of the best out of them. You know, every dismissal is poured over, whereas back in the day, you know, you've slogged on up in the air, and I want to realise, and you've gone into the next game. And, you know, that's just one difference you can pick out, I suppose, from just that. Unfortunately, there's still a lot of, I guess, men over the age of 70, still in charge of a lot of boards and, et cetera, and still have that old-school way of going about stuff. So, it's great to have young voices on boards who represent the players, and how do they get their thoughts through to you? Do they just text you like, "Oh, James, I'm really annoyed this week. Will you sort it out?" Yes, someone do. I mean, look, my phone number and my email and everything else is passed at all over the place, so if people want to get in touch, maybe they absolutely can. The kind of structure we have is there is, you know, a player rep, kind of at every county, at every women's region, you know, who are the kind of, you know, go-to contacts for the players in that team, if they want to go through that, you know, as well as the kind of PDMs or the personal development managers that we've got around the country who help the players out with various things going on in their lives. You know, there are roots and avenues to go down if you want to come and, you know, raise things, and players do. We get together as a group of reps on sort of Zoom calls and video calls like this, where we can, because obviously spread all over the country. We'll try and get together in person a couple of times a year, normally pre-season and post. We'll normally try and get the reps together, maybe take them away to have some chats and do some productive stuff and try and get those views across. So, yeah, we feel like, especially in the last couple of years, those communication channels have got a lot better. So we definitely know more about what the players want and how the players feel. It's challenge, that's a challenge at times as well, because, you know, you've got everybody from, you know, myself at 34, you've got some players around the country. You're older, you've got some players who are younger, you've got obviously all the women involved as well, you've got white ball players, red ball players, people who play everything. And they all want different things as well, right? There are red ball players around the country who don't want to lose out on, you know, a championship game here or there. Well, don't want to cut that down. So, you know, we can't go and say this is the best option for the schedule, but what we can go and say is, you know, we actually think there should be some sort of minimum standards put in place for how much break there is between games. You can't have people turning up really late at night, back at home, or wherever they are, wherever hotel, to get in at one in the morning to then, you know, go and play the next day. That's not accepted in RV. So it's more with the bit we're searching for is more a minimum standard, sort of something to put in place so that we can, you know, ensure the safety and that everyone can perform as well as they can, because ultimately that's, you know, what we want to achieve. The schedule's such a big talking point. We've mentioned it to pretty much every guest and you get, you hear a lot, you see a lot. It annoys me when you get people who aren't in the modern game, talking about it's NR, you know, this day and age going to the, like you said, a three-day game and then a one-day game, then come back and finish the threat. It was ridiculous. Like, you look at the state of a lot of old players, older pros. They're physically, absolutely gone. There's a lot of them have had serious mental health issues. Financially, they're not as well off. So obviously there's a lot of differences now in the game where you've actually got to, you know, look after yourself in the future a bit more. A lot of this is, at the end of days, of trying to support the current players, isn't it, and make the game a bit better and just the welfare? But I suppose the big question is like, what can, I mean, this isn't probably a one-word answer, even an answer. What can actually realistically change? So we need to get everyone around the table to make everyone see that this is, you know, a bigger problem. I don't think they kind of, what we're shouting about, the people perhaps sat around the table, you know, in the boardrooms, don't realize this is as much of a problem as it is for the people playing the game. If you look at some of the stats, right, so we did some stuff pre-season to try and get some proper statistics to take in on what players feel. So 76% of the players of the picture has caused them safety concerns regarding traveling. 81% said he was concerned with physical perspective. 62% concerns from mental health perspective. I mean, these are big percentages of our players, of our members who are concerned with, you know, key aspects of the kind of job and the life. Look, there's always going to be stresses. You're playing professional sport. You're going to be asked to do things which are hard physically, mentally, you know, I mean, you have to play when you're really struggling, really down. That's part of the game, right? We're not trying to get away from that. But the schedule is such a part that plays into that. So how do we smooth it out? How do we make things better? Do we need to cut a game or two? Very possibly. Do you mean what we've seen in the last couple of years is the hundreds come in and taken the entirety of all this? And everything else is largely been squeezed either side. Now, some people like the hundreds and people hate the hundreds. The hundreds have been a fabulous thing for the game. It's going to shore up the finances of the game for years to come. It's provided a brilliant thing for the women's game. It's opened that up, put in the game. The women's games alongside the men's games has opened. You know, that's that side of the game up to a huge audience. The perhaps wouldn't have necessarily got to it at that time period. It's advanced that. We're seeing how much that's changed with the new tier's structure. That's been pushed forward purely because the hundreds got us on that road really early. So the hundreds have been brilliant, but it's caused some problems, right? That's just what's happened in the schedule. So we need to smooth this out to make sure that the rest of the game can survive as well as possible. We want the best players to come through playing the best possible cricket. So play for their county. So it's the best standard cricket you can possibly come to watch. And then hopefully they go on to be the best players we can produce to go and play for England. That's the goal of the whole system. So we want to smooth that out somewhat to make sure the players aren't being asked to do things that quite frankly nobody would be asked to do in their jobs these days, you know, across the board in a lot of things. Yeah, mate, I mean, you're hitting the nail on the head really, that the hundreds has changed things dramatically the last couple of years. The before the hundreds, for me, there wasn't always too much cricket. It's just the schedule was quite packed. Obviously they reduced championship cricket and you still got to have a worthwhile four-day competition for me. 2020 cricket, it makes a lot of money for counties. You want to keep the CEOs and, you know, support is happy. You want to have your ex amount of home games, which turn over a lot of revenue for a lot of the clubs. And then the 50 overcome, which, you know, there's so many views on that from players whether you're a senior player, a young player, rightly or wrongly. But for me, eight games in 15 days is sh*t in Sh*t House. Like, that's just to put it bluntly, it's ridiculous. I've played in it for three years and it was, I didn't even train for it. You literally just go home, turn up at the next game, whatever it was in a bit of a day and then crack on with it. I get that, you know, England still play 50 ever cricket and they didn't do very well the last world cups. But then if none of the top players are playing that comp, why are you playing so many games? Surely that can be condensed a little bit. Yeah, there's so much that can be changed, but you never get everyone happy, oh yeah, like, that's the problem you're trying to, you can never going to appease every single where it would be players, support staff, chairman, CEOs, people who run the game, support is like, it's impossible, isn't it? Pretty much. I mean, look, everybody got their backup when Andrew Strauss did his sort of reporter for years back and that got pushed out into the press. And, you know, that was cutting cricket quite drastically, you know, there was a lot of players you didn't thought that was too much, right? So we're not talking about a huge reduction in cricket here, we're talking about some smarter scheduling, maybe a game or two here or there, look, at the moment in the blast, there are seven home games. Should that go to five? I've had conversations, you know, with a lot of people about if we have slightly less home games and we spread them out a bit more and we market them well, we can get the same number of people through the gates as we went across seven games. So can we do something like that? Do we need 14 championship games? Could we cut it by a couple? Are there smarter ways to do things? Do we need to look at days of the week the games are played on? You know, we play four-day cricket, for example, we start the start of the season, we play Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, every week. Well, if we change that we play Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday one week and then we push it out another day or two here or there, then yes, we might start the next game on a Saturday, but that might mean that every can ever recover a slightly better and we, you know, just move things out a little bit. So I think there are ways and means we haven't got to cut anything drastically. It just needs some smarter scheduling and sitting down and trying to find the best route for all parties, I think. Yeah, mate. Wow. You're the noise at the top. You're good luck with hitting some pen to paper on that and trying to work a schedule, or help work a schedule out. I know there was one thing or a touch up when the women's game with the PCA. What, how has the PCA helped the women's game in the last couple of years? Obviously, there's been massive changes, all positive, hopefully, on Brunty or no more than me and I'm sure she can get into this a little bit more than me. But, Dracon, it would be good now to align with lining the teams into counties going forward. So, I think the big message for the most part that's come out of this, from a women's side of thing, is equality. How can we make things more equal for the women compared to the men's game? That's been the biggest thing. So, some of the great things to come out recently, we're going to go into this tiered structure. The women's game is going to change again. As of next year, we're going to have eight teams, tier one teams that are going to be attached to counties. The counties are going to take them on. They're going to be, sorry ladies and Lancashire ladies, and around the country, which is going to be a great thing. So, what that means is that hopefully, or they will, they'll have a permanent home. One of the counties with one of the same rights as the men sort of thing, they'll have to say they'll be able to train the same and everything else compared to. So, I'll take you an example of the Western Storm, which is a team down in my part of the world in the southwest. They've been a little bit of a Morgan a little bit. At Somerset, they've been kind of here. They're everywhere training and that's not uncommon. That's been quite similar for a lot of the women's teams. So, that's going to give them a fabulous base to be able to set up their lives, train, have an equal standing compared to some of the men around the country, which is brilliant. Salaries are increasing. We've been pushing that, trying to push equality in that. So, I think minimum salaries are going to be the same across the board. Men are women's games. Brilliant. Future's fund, there's something to come up. Future's fund has been something brilliant that's kind of got set up by Daryl Mitchell, who was in my role previous to me, to try and take care of the male players as they transition out of the game. And, you know, the women's game has been getting built out in the last few years, and we've been getting more and more full-time female contracts. Obviously, brilliant now for the next year, we're going to have eight full-time teams with 15 players, all full-time professionals. So, we need to build that future's fund into the women's game from now, so that when women transition out of the game, just like the men, there is a pot there to be able to say, thank you very much for your service to cricket, your service to the game. Here is something hopefully to help you to be able to transition into your kind of next stage of life in your next career. So, you know, slowly but surely all of this is coming through, and we're getting to a brilliant point where the women's games expanding and the equality across the board between male and female cricket is getting better and very, very close now to be an exactly the same aligned. So, it's still going to take some time. There still fits the sort, but yeah, it's getting there. I wonder why that couldn't have happened. Obviously, the future fund thing I've played for in 20 years, and you know, it's a thank you on Instagram, thanks for coming sort of situation. And the issue for me was we've been professional since 2014, like every, all nine years prior to that, actually 10 years prior to that, that I was playing. There was no sort of, obviously, way to see something as good as that coming to the women's side of the game, but since 2013, 2014, we became professional. I would have thought that conversation would have come into play, because obviously the pension side of it was very difficult too. My pension is the same as Natalie's. Our pension works are the same, even though I've played for England 10 years more than her. It's things like this are just, and that was both finishing on the same salary as well. So, all sort of level pegging. It blows my mind how, you know, I mean, somebody 10 years behind, even though coming into that professional part, it's taken 10 years to get to this stage, past being professional, to actually start doing professional things, maternity clauses literally come in the last, I don't know, six months to a year, proper ones. And then obviously, the pension schemes and the future funds, yeah, it's so slow moving, but I do understand I'm not silly. There's obviously revenue plays a big part in that, and the county's contributing to it, which is how the men's works. So, how will the women's work if the counties, will the counties be contributing towards that fund? Yeah, that's what we're aiming for. So, I'll go through a few of those things that you mentioned there. I struggled to speak to some of the bits going back sort of as far as, you know, when you start up there for England and everything else, because I was just a player, I suppose, through that period. I didn't have the kind of knowledge about the rest of the game and that as much as I do now, so I don't know exactly what the kind of scenario was back in the day. So, just as a bit of a, I'll explain the features of the features fund, I suppose, you wouldn't invite, because you've had an England Central contract the whole way through. You wouldn't have accrued kind of credits for the features fund. The same way that the men Centrally contracted players don't accrue any now. So, the way the features fund works is it's based on the team salary payments that the counties pay. So, the counties effectively, so the England contracts are separate from, obviously, that team salary payment that paid centrally by the ECB. So, for every year you hold a county contractor, I suppose, you accrue kind of credits. Or, you know, you get credited, I suppose, for your contribution to kind of county cricket, I suppose, through that period. So, that's paid purely by the counties. So, for example, a colleague of mine, Stephen Finn, who would have had a settled contract for seven, eight years, possibly, but played for a better part of 20. Those seven or eight years wouldn't have counted towards, you know, his kind of features fund payments. So, what we're trying to do now is, obviously, build that out in the women's game to be exactly the same mechanism, really. So, that the counties, as they come on board now next year, will be contributing into a part that the players on retirement will be able to kind of access and, you know, get a contribution towards, to say, thank you for their kind of part they've played in the game. It's frustrating that things don't move faster. Trust me, I'm fully awarded beyond that. We've been talking a lot of these things for a long time. Has that ever, have a PC ever or ECB looked at other, basically, Australia? Let's just go Australia, how they do it and how they have been doing it. So, let's just take, for instance, Elise Perry has been playing as long as me. I might have played a couple more years. She will walk away with a futures fund and probably, I think, between $500,000 and a million dollars. For example, does the does the PC or ECB ever look into how the leading countries in World Cricket do these things? Yeah. So, but that's kind of done slightly differently. So, you'll know about this, you'll know about the England Women's Player Partnership, same as TEPs, the Team England Player Partnership. They kind of sit as a slightly separate entity to us. They effectively run those contracts. The England Women's Player Partnership will negotiate on behalf of the England Women and TEP or the Team England Player Partnership will negotiate with ECB on behalf of the men. And that's slightly separate to the wider game, the wider PCA kind of standpoint, I suppose. So, there'd be perks in the England Men's and England Women's contracts will be purely focused on the negotiation with them and the ECB, because you take out the county element in that, compared to the county game or the domestic game, which that money filters from the ECB into the counties and then the counties kind of run their business on that sort of behalf, even though the ECB have a say, I suppose, in how some of that money has to get spent and salary caps and collars and how much they've deemed fair for the counties and the women's regions to spend on players and everything else. But it's been a slow process to get some of these things through. They're still niggly points. They're still arguing points, but it feels as though we're kind of shifting very much in the right direction with a lot of these things. And that equality point that we're trying to get across is being built out. Maybe not as quick as we'd all like, but we're trying to move that forward as fast as we can. And if we had our way that it would have been done many years ago, I think. But yeah, it's getting there, but perhaps we're slower than we'd all like. And I just feel like a personal attack. Sorry. I got going then. I'm like, I'm not a bitter, old hair gets more. I'm actually really proud of everything I've done over the last two decades, you know, paying for my own kit to, I don't know, rocking up on some tour where it's just so village, representing Cooley Country, to like, to playing in front of a packed house at Lord's and winning the ashes. And then being a central contact put contracted person to sharing a dressing room at the 100. Like, it's come so far. It's unreal. Yes, it's frustrating. It takes time, but I'm so happy with where it is. Also, I want to get that out there. I'm not miserable. I am very happy. And I'm so glad that somebody close to me is reaping the rewards of all that, that I guess you as well, you paved the way for. So somebody has to go through that, you know what I mean? So it's like, these things take time, but it's people like you, and the one before you one after you that just keep pushing that player's view of it, where we sound like we're moaning, but it's all for the greater good, because the world's a scary place now and things are ever changing. And these things need to be taken care of, mental health is probably, you know, one of the most important things now. So yeah, equality and change in the minimum standard is where it sort of comes first. And I guess that's where the negotiations are now. Pretty much. Look, this is happening. This is happening across sports through areas, right? You look at Premier League footballers of 20 years ago. You know, I mean, they got nowhere near the pay and the perks and everything else. And you just got lucky or unlucky by, you know, where you were in a, you know, where you had your career and what sort of time. And you know, that's actually how, you know, if things pan out at times, there was, you know, the people who, who retired, you know, the year before the futures fund started, didn't have access to it. I mean, that's, is it fair? Probably not. But it, these things sort of have to start at some points. And unfortunately, you know, that's how those things have to work at some point. But look, there are a lot of things that I'm fighting for now. I'll probably never see and be, you know, privy to. I mean, we're looking at, you know, trying to change the schedule and already where the can sort of been kicked too far down the road to kick anything from 2025. But we're really hopeful now we're going to push incredibly hard to make sure that 2026 from the men's side is that schedule sort of gets some changes and some positive changes. You know, that's coming right toward the back end of my career. So I might not even see, you know, I need a bit of that. But you've kind of feel that while you're here in a, in a time when I'm just, you know, a keeper of this role while I've got it. And I just want to make sure that if I can say thank you to the kind of game or the people who come after me for everything the game has given me, then that's what I'm going to try and do for the sort of last few years of my playing career. And yeah, I hope I can kind of carry as well as possible, I suppose, while I'm here. Yeah. And I'm sure you are, James. It could be worse, couldn't it? We could all be on the front line with the life expectancy of three months. So I'll count my lucky tickets that I got to play cricket as a hobby. Did you want to say something about counties, Jack? Yeah, I did. Yeah. Well, just before I got onto that, I just wanted to finish a little bit more on the 100. The 100s, like you said, it's been so good to secure the game financially in this country. And it's brought on the women's game by so much. How important has it been for the women's game and for equality? And secondly, do you foresee it staying after its current contract or whatever you want to call it expired? Oh, right. Yeah, I mean, look from a women's game perspective. I think, look, let's be honest, the ECB got a little bit lucky. So COVID happened. It wasn't planned out the way that it turned out. Do you mean the women weren't necessarily supposed to be playing all their games with alongside the men's games at the big ground? COVID kind of forced that as a bit of a this has to happen. This makes life much easier because we can just have both teams at one ground and it's much easier to host. The the follow on from that has been this incredible surge of, you know, interest, quality, everything that everyone's seen from the women's side of the 100 that's, you know, pushed it in the direction it's gone. It's been incredible. It's pushed the game the women's game so far so quickly. It's open to shop window for some of the girls to show their talents against the best players around the world on TV at the big grounds in front of big crowds. And that is going to be, you know, one of the power of the big massive moments looking back in women's cricket, particularly in this country. Is it going to carry on looking like that? I've got absolutely zero idea. To perfectly honest, it's really exciting from a the plan is to use this 100 window now which kicks off this week as basically a shop window to try and sell, you know, private equity stakes in the 100 which is going to bring hopefully massive amount of finances into the game across the board and shore it up for years to come. I don't know the nitty gritty kind of details about all of those things yet. And I don't know how it's going to look in the future. But what I do know is that, you know, cricket will be in a pretty safe place in what is a challenging time around the world for a lot of people and businesses and sports and all sorts of things. You see the problems happening in rugby and the issues they're going through and everything else. So to know that cricket's relatively speaking, pretty safe and on a good path is, you know, certainly quite, you know, a nice thing to feel. But how it looks going through the future, I'm not entirely sure about which direction of travel it takes. But look without it and this is what everyone needs to understand. I hope people do understand, particularly the ones who dislike it. I don't know what sort of place cricket would be in looking forward right now if we didn't have it. Right. So from everything you can throw at ECB for, you know, the handling of the whole thing and how they designed it and the rules and everything else. It's been incredible for the game and we should be very thankful that they made that decision when they did. There's enough for the heavy stuff for now, mate. Let's try and have a little bit of fun now moving on. Let's try and have a bit of a light-hearted nature. So now we're on to the segment. You'll know this. We're on to the Cricket Archive guest stat alert, Cyron. Now, a little, we've got to stop you, but also we're going to ask you a question involved with it as well. I'm up. That was a great time, by the way, Jack. I think that's the best yet. Well done. With a little point as well. Your best bowling figures is nine for 34 against Middlesex V Durham at Lords in 2015. Who took the other wicket in the innings? You know, I'm going to get back. Stephen Finn. So it was the back of a length board towards Menasha. And there's Menasha nicked it onto his inner thigh and got caught. Gully, what? Yeah, I'm sure Finney. I think Finney mentioned it on the radio the other day as it happens. Excellent. Yeah. I think it was the eighth one. I think I had seven. I think Finney got the eighth one and I got the last two. But yeah, that feels like a long time ago now as well. That's an independent member. And I remember it because I was obviously playing for Yorkshire at the time in the summer. And that was obviously the years when Middlesex Yorkshire was exhausting. And I was like, "Bloody, I was obviously chuffed a bit for you as a mate." But I was like, "B*ck yeah, he's taken nine for at Lords. That's not bad, is it? Good effort?" It was a good day. I tell you what, it was one of those days. So Timmy Murta got injured, pulled a hamstring first in his, and there was a unbelievable game because that's kind of been forgotten about a little bit. So we got 430 Sam Robs and 150. I think we bowled Durham out for 280 odds, maybe some of that, maybe 300. And we all walked off as a group of bowlers, kind of high-fiving, really happy. I went back in the back, we were 37 for seven about an hour later. It was one of those days where it clouded over at Lords and it was dark and gloomy after being really sunny for two days. We got pulled out for 80. I think Timmy Murta last week had put on about 35. And then we rocked up next day, I think I got two wickets that night and we bowled them out for 70 or something like that, so we weren't comfortable at the end, but it was crazy. In the tavern for lunchtime. Perfect. Yeah, it was good in the bowlers bar, in the bowlers bar, and he wiped it, so it was. Excellent. Moving on to our update on the PCA MVP so far, after a week in the game, we've finally got a bowler in the top two of the blast MVP. David Payne, absolutely unreal for Gloucester, the show. Gloucester qualified for the quarterfinals as well. He's on 235 MVP points, easy for you to say. Just five behind Birmingham Bears, Dan Mausley, who's still rounder, will round as obviously dominate this club. England MVP at the minute, Ollie Poet's top and former Under the Guest. He's just ahead of Gus Atkinson and Harry Brooke, who's been on here as well. You're an esteemed company there, Bones, well. That's the work of you two, getting the best guess. It's great to see Payney at the top, Bones. I know you'll probably sing his praises of fellow Boulder as well, but who have you seen this year that's impressed you and who's you back in for the overall MVP? That's a good question. Well, first thing, I think it's been great to see Gus transition into that test team in the first couple of weeks that he's had an opportunity to do that. Look, Lord, it was an incredible performance. I know that every waxed-on lyrical about Jimmy and his career and what a time he had and what he gave to Crickett. Everyone, I'm sure the three of us included have looked at Jimmy at certain points and gone, right, I'm going to try and do something similar. Maybe not been quite successful as he was through the 20 years that he managed to do it, but who's going to win the MVP? That's a great question. Liam, my shout-out pre-season, he's obviously smashing it and a few people keep chatting about him and Higgins. They're always most all-rounders around it, aren't they? Yeah, Thor's is always a good shout. He gets runs and wickets often, which is a key component of playing, really, but he does that a lot. You just stick with Thor's and join Jack. Yeah, I think I might have to. I know as well, we grew up together with us, and we're the same age, so I'll stick with Thor. Yeah, there you go for your mate. Anyway, in the Women's, there's been no Rachel Hayhoe Flint trophy games last week, so we'll just talk about the England Women's MVP, and I'm happy to say Natalie Sivet-Brent is leading the top of the, I think, I don't know overall, or just ODI, but I do know Sarah Glenn is top of the T20 rankings, which is great. I love Sarah Glenn. She's a fantastic human, and one of our under the lid guests, so... Yeah, another great guest. Yeah, well, we had Nat on as well. I just keep stringing them out, don't we? There's a bit of a correlation here. It'd be nice if I went on a run here for the back end of the year. You're finishing the season strong, mate. If I get 20 wickets here in the last couple of championship games, that's going to phone really well for future guests, isn't it? We're on the end, mate. If you do end the quiz, mate, you might end up with a decent bit of golf prize, as well. Right, next week's segment, nose and iron for this, but it's basically the under the lid's big question, and I hope you've been prepped for this, because it's never good to be caught short, but we want to know what we want to know, and our listeners want to know, something about you that no one, or at least the closest people to you know about you, anything could be on your butt. It could be a side DJ gig in Ibiza, it could be anything, it could play the game. Okay, so, nobody, very few people will know this, bar my boss and a couple of other people, so there was 10 of us at the Morgan, or sort of associated with the Morgan, I suppose Mark Wallace being my boss. We bought a race horse a couple years ago from Jeremy Kyle, so we bought a horse called Prince Nino from Jeremy Kyle, who bought him for an absolute bowload of money, the poor guy got injured, went in the equivalent of going to the Achilles, I think, they put him through the operation that he needed and decided they didn't really want to wait for him to go through all of his rehab. So, we picked him up and he raced for a couple of years and fortunately didn't have a great time with things, but yeah, Jeremy Kyle, Jeremy Kyle, Jeremy Kyle, TV personality, Jeremy Kyle, yeah. For the TV host, yeah, God's, I remember watching that as such cross. Yeah, well, to be fair, the horse was not much better than some of the stuff he did on TV to be honest, but so. You've got an injured horse, that's great. Does his plasma call him a horse lover? Yeah, he loves the horse. Oh, in, oh, obviously big into the big into the horses, they might have a horse together. It's kind of an Irish thing, isn't it? I think Jeremy and Craig overton have been to their horses a little bit, I'm sure they've got a horse. They definitely have, maybe with a few other people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the guys like the horse racer, amongst many other things you can bet and gamble on, I'm sure. But yeah, there is as well. Dangerous. Right, that brings us on to the last round bones, as you'll know this, as well, this is probably the most nervous you'll be for a while. It's our quiz, the last round, where our guests get to swing from the ring as Bronte wants. Beautiful. Lovely poker. You'll have a 60 second timer, got to answer as many questions as you can, as quickly as you can. If you don't know, just pass them and get another one in. Everyone right, you get a run and then we'll get you. Who's leading? So, Oli Hanan Dolby, Harry Brooke and Catherine Bryce are all joint top on eight at the minute, leading the way for probably some amazing golf prize from Taylor Nade or someone like that. Okay. Keep chatting about on it. Are they quicker related or are they any subject related? So it's not general knowledge, mate. It's mainly cricket with the odd little portfolio. Let's go. Try and get more than Ravi, because Ravi was on, was it last week or two weeks ago? He only got three, he's bottom of the leaderboard. Okay. Let's go. Passing is crucial. Are you ready? I'm going to cut you down. Three, two, one, go. How many PCA reps are there currently? 32 or 36? 32. Who did you make your first last debut against for Glamorgan in 2007? Nottinghamshire. Correct. Who did you share a partnership of 1997 with when you scored your maiden list day century in 2019? John Simpson. In the week of your 17th birthday, what did you become the youngest player to do for Glamorgan? I was the youngest to take 12 wickets in a foot-class match. How long did it take you to cycle from Paris to London as part of the Trust charity bike ride in October? 17 hours? Yeah, we'll give you that. In what year did Sophia Gardens host its first test? 2009 ashes. Yeah. Which current Pakistan opener did you dismiss in a youth test back in 2009? Currently playing in the shot. Shall move. Shall move. Shall move. Which legendary Welsh rugby union? I'll start swapping at it. Which legendary Welsh rugby union winger was also born in Morriston? How do you say this? Have I said that right? Morriston? Morriston? Morriston. We should know this. Five, four, three. I don't want to get it so badly wrong because I feel like I don't know fast. I don't know. Shane Williams. That was going to be my guess but I didn't necessarily see obvious. Okay. Well, it's a good crack. Six apparently. We just rounded you up to six. But by the way, that bike ride, London to Paris bike ride, you raised 52 grand for the PCT, which is incredible. Yeah, we did well. We raised some really good money. It ended up being a really good group. And then me and the commercial director, PCA commercial director Rob Smythe decided to ride back from Paris London in the day. So that was a different. We started, we took a photo, I took the artistry off. And then we took a photo outside Big Ben and we got home. So we had a couple of hours with your bottom. I was times. Yeah, that was hard work. That's awesome. Awesome. And you've been awesome today, mate. Thanks so much for getting under the lid with us. It's been great to catch up again and get some really interested insights and information. I know Bronti would have really enjoyed it from the women's perspective as well. Yeah, sorry for getting a get no rants out. Listen, thanks both. You're doing a brilliant job. Very much appreciate your time. And yeah, hopefully this is a thing that all the guests going a bit of a run after they come on the podcast and we can encourage more and more of the current. I'm going to be all over you. When you finish the season strong, because you will, I'm going to be all over you saying, there we go. You know why? There we go. We can push that narrative out to the rest of the players. 20 wickets, please. 20 more. Okay. Thanks, both. See you soon. See you. Bye. How good? That was wicked. How good was James? All the, he'd been asking for some under the lid stuff like that. Fridges in the way. Slightly different one this week, because we obviously talked a lot more in depth stuff that a lot of people, listeners may not know about. You could argue it wasn't as lighthearted or as entertaining as some of our others, but it was actually so insightful and so important for us as players, future players, past players, anyone listening, hopefully has a little bit more knowledge and insight on the few pretty gritty subjects or what's going on in the game in the minute that they're just reading about or hearing about in the media. We had to keep the banter to a minimum this week. I'm not swearing. I think it was you. I definitely saw. I definitely did. Let's last bit of feedback before we wrap up. Yeah, we've had one from Dan, and he says, "My brother raves about the 100 and how it's got his kids. He's got a boy and a girl into cricket. He believes the ECB is ahead of other sports and bringing new interest into the game. They both play and watch cricket now. Do you think in the end it will have been worth all the upheaval? I suppose we'll only really know some way into the future. If the financial stay there and it stabilizes counties and counties don't go out of business and the county game can continue, then it's probably been worth it from the financial point. Otherwise, we wouldn't really have professional cricket as it is going forward to be completely honest. Whether you like it or not. I think everybody needs to give it. If there's still any doubters out there, just remember what James said about. Yeah, it's been annoying in terms of like the purity of the game being what was created, obviously, and this being a little bit different to that. But ultimately what it's brought to cricket, financial side to it, boosting the women's game 50% and then the future of that and what it looks like to what will happen in the next 12 to 18 months. I think he's going to be the biggest eye opening situation. I think that's the bit to look out for, not this season, which will still be great but next season. I think that will be an eye opener and something so many girls and boys and men and women can just get involved in and have as a career and a long career. Even if you never made it to England, you can still have a really great crack at some life-changing finance. I think it's so exciting in the world of sport in England, particularly for women, but will still be great throughout. Watch this space, I think, next season, for me. Well, that's all we've got time for. What an amazing episode, it's been pretty lengthy as well. One more thing. Yeah, one more for me. You asked us for a couple of side shirts last week. Here we go, Mili Kerr under the lid guest, kindly donated the kit that she actually doesn't have spare. But you tugged at her heartstrings, Jack. So there's Mili Kerr's playing shirt and the entire New Zealand team's signatures, plus, you know, obviously I wouldn't have not been able to make this happen. Stole it off her back. And there we go, entire women's signatures. Yes, get it out there. [silence] [silence] [silence] Yes. And if they're not sure, if they're not sure where to bid on this, send some messages in to us and sort that for you. [silence] Please subscribe, leave a review, tell your mates, hopefully you've enjoyed it. We'll get another superb guest on next week, but it's Tera for now. Tera? (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]