Cricket club's £1m disaster

The New Road outfit has announced it lost £1,164,114 over the past 12 months because of the 2007 floods.

However, an insurance pay-out of £300,000, a £75,000 grant from the England and Wales Cricket Board and donations of more than £17,000 meant the County ended the year with a pre-tax loss of £693,211.

Chief executive Mark Newton believes the devastation caused in June and July is the "worst disaster ever to hit a county cricket club".

"We never thought that the costs would be this high," admitted Newton. "We could have coped with the first flood, but it was the second one which really decimated us.

"We have to take the view that what happened last summer won't happen again for a very, very long time.

"If it were to happen again in say the next five to 10 years then it would become very serious."

Mr Newton is hoping the County will be back on track in the next two years, but he admits it is going to take a lot of hard work to achieve this ambitious goal.

The New Road outfit tends to report profits of around £50,000 each year so, to wipe out the loss of 2007, they are going to need to make £800,000 by the end of 2009.

"It is going to be a tough ask," Mr Newton said. "But we are talking to various organisations about different projects, there is the Chairman's Flood Club and, of course, we are going to have to do a lot of fund-raising ourselves.

"Hopefully this time next year we will be able to report that we have recouped half of the money."

Mr Newton admits the situation could have been a lot worse had the County not received a £300,000 pay-out after not playing at New Road since June 21.

"I think we got lucky, a technicality that meant we got some money," he said. "To try and get cover for flooding is very prohibitive cost-wise, so to get a part pay-out was very pleasing.

"What we are doing now is making sure that we are covered for losses in revenue because of rain-affected games.

"We are also still in talks with Kidderminster Victoria Cricket Club that should anything like what happened occur again then we will be able to move cricket there very quickly."

Cricket costs rose by 11 per cent to £1.776m as a result of no player retiring or leaving at the end of the 2006 season plus an increased investment into the County's Academy.

The trading side of Worcestershire lost £864,159 against a surplus of £78,108 the previous year as revenue virtually dried up during July, August and September.

As a result of these losses, the net value of the County's balance sheet dropped by 27 per cent.

Worcestershire has ringfenced its cricket budget to ensure they can build on the success of winning the 2007 NatWest Pro40 crown - its first title in 13 years.

Director of cricket Steve Rhodes has already recruited 2005 England Ashes hero Simon Jones from Glamorgan and the precocious bowling talents of Chris Whelan (Middlesex) and Gareth Andrew (Somerset) for the new season.

While the floods wrecked the County's season last year, Newton believes the current flooding at New Road is nothing out of the ordinary.

"While we are expecting it to peak this afternoon, we don't believe it has caused too much damage," Mr Newton added.

"Obviously the longer it goes the more silt we will need to remove and that is what causes the damage to the grass, so ideally we need it cleared in the next week or so.

"Should it stay for another month then that is when we will have to start to worry."

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