Rob Lynch: Supporting cricket’s elite

After leaving the professional game in 2003, the New Zealander has maintained his passion for cricket and business throughout his working life, which has seen him in various senior roles within the game. As a Player Representative, he grew commercial profiles of professional cricketers before joining CricHQ as Managing Director.

Lynch joined Middlesex in 2016 as Commercial Director before being promoted to Chief Operating Officer in May 2019 as a result of transforming the club’s commercial operation through securing major sponsorship deals and creating numerous successful commercial initiatives. Rob initially joined PCA as Commercial Director in February 2020, before being made Chief Executive Officer.

The guidance the PCA provides to players is very broad and is lifelong because once players become PCA members, they are members for life. The two key areas of support for players revolve around offering personal development and welfare support and clear and comprehensive contractual advice. These are very wide-ranging offerings, and a huge number of initiatives and projects happen to make sure we are fulfilling our role in championing the ongoing interests of professional cricketers in England and Wales.

Our support mechanisms start from when players join the academy. Our nationwide team of Personal Development Managers (PDMs), six in all, start to build relationships with players to guide them into the professional environment. One of our most important initiatives is PCA Rookie Camp which started in 2011. It is a day where first year professionals from all around the country head to Edgbaston for a busy day with different workshops and

seminars to officially induct them into the professional game. These sessions involve anti-corruption, contract advice, England player Q&As, gambling awareness, social media advice and much more. Players lean on support of the PCA for personal development and contractual support throughout their cricket careers and beyond.

The Futures Week held in November is a key period in the calendar too. The week shines a light on the need to prepare players for their second career with the flagship Futures Conference usually held over two days at St. George’s Park, Burton-upon-Trent. This year we are adapting to a Futures Series of webinars to maintain the same level of support and guidance. ➡

All these initiatives run under the Personal Development and Welfare Programme (PDWP) umbrella, which includes further workshops that support current and former players as well as substantial educational funding for each individual member every year. It is not unusual for the PCA to help with funding for former players to move into a third or even fourth career.

The PCA has been in regular contact with all players throughout the pandemic. Initially this just involved welfare checkins to make sure players were ok but this quickly turned into working out how each individual player could use the opportunity during lockdown to better themselves. Whether it be free online courses or offering webinar opportunities, it was an important time to engage with every player. Over 100 players took on new courses within the first 50 days to highlight this.

We also supported players in making sure they stuck together in negotiations regarding pay cuts and sacrifices, such as relinquishing player prize money. PCA Chairman Daryl Mitchell led negotiations with the ECB and the 18 first-class counties on behalf of players with the aim of maintaining as many jobs as possible for players.

Outside of cricket, the PCA is part of the Professional Players Federation (PPF) and different departments meet regularly to discuss best practice when it comes to players’ associations in the UK.

The PCA is also one of the founding members of the Federation of International Cricketers Associations (FICA), which is made up of cricket player associations around the world. It is important to grow relationships with likeminded organisations to learn off each other. Often, we encounter the same issues, so knowledge sharing is a huge positive of being part of these groups.

The global game is facing challenges due to the pandemic and the uncertainty we continue to face. ECB Chief Executive Tom Harrison has been very open with the financial hole the game in England and Wales is suffering with coronavirus set to cost the game significant financial losses.

The one positive of the last six months has been the unity within the game and that needs to be maintained to navigate our way through the crisis. Every stakeholder is and will feel further pain and that is the unfortunate reality. From our role as representing professional players there are many challenges. Prior to the 2020 season we had concluded negotiations regarding the County Partnership Agreement which provided vast new benefits for players in a deal with the ECB and counties.

However, the financial landscape is completely different now to what it was 12 months ago. There is an acceptance from all parties that flexibility is key, and we have already shown this with a raft of new measures brought in, including reducing the minimum wage for 2021 and extensions to rookie and academy players contracts.

We are constantly learning and passing on our knowledge through our relations with player associations from other sports. Being relatively new into the PCA and taking part in meetings with other sports, it provides me with great comfort knowing the PCA is leading the way in many areas of our work and we are open to sharing our processes to help other professional sportspeople.

However, one current area we are developing is the PCA’s approach to Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI). This is something we have spoken to the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) at length about and we are working very closely with Simone Pound who is the PFA’s Head of Equality and Diversity as part of our working group on this topic. Initiated through our membership, this is a long-term plan to ensure the PCA does all it can to make cricket a game for all.

From a personal point of view this is a difficult question to answer given my short professional playing career was in New Zealand at the beginning

of the millennium, so the player care I received then was incomparable to what we have here at the PCA in 2020. However, I am aware of how much this area has developed in England and Wales, particularly in the last 10 years.

Through my various roles in cricket, including as a player representative, it is clear to see how vital the work is in protecting players and supporting them for their future beyond the field. The work the PCA does in this area, led by PCA Director of Development and Welfare Ian Thomas is nothing short of phenomenal.

The majority of player care is now in preventative work based around personal development and wellbeing support and this is probably the biggest step forward to where ‘player care’ was a decade ago. Yes, we still have procedures in place to help those who are in desperate need for whatever reason and that support will always be there, however, the more time, effort and money we can invest in education and wellbeing support to keep players’ minds healthy, the better.

The Professional Cricketers’ Trust (the players’ charity) does incredible work in offering lifelong support to PCA members and their immediate families when they need it most. As we have seen recently with Gloucestershire player Tom Smith for example, he has been so open on the tragic loss of his wife which left him to raise two young children on his own and he needed support, both psychologically and financially. We are proud to be able to support families like Tom’s and to make sure this level of support continues; the players’ charity does need finances in the way of donations. U

Established in 1967, the PCA champions the ongoing interests of professional cricketers in England and Wales, based out of the Kia Oval and its second office at Edgbaston. Through the delivery of an excellent Personal Development and Welfare Programme the PCA provides clear and comprehensive contractual advice to around 500 current playing members across male and female cricket, while it also has over 3,000 former players who remain members.