Why Matt Prior is stepping in to save his boyhood club

Matt Prior is a Sussex man through and through.

It was the county who first recognised his talent when he moved to England as an 11-year-old, and where he spent all 13 years of his professional career. He won the County Championship with Sussex three times in the 2000s, before he became embedded as England’s Test wicketkeeper. Now he’s fighting to bring the club back from financial disaster.

“For me this hasn’t been the last few weeks, it’s been 10 years where Sussex cricket has not been run well in my view,” Prior tells Wisden.com. “The culture of the club has deteriorated to a point where it’s now unrecognisable… This is not just a financial thing, this is a culture that has been allowed to rot for a very very long time.”

Sussex has been in the headlines over the last few weeks after it was placed into special measures by the ECB over reported financial mismanagement. They were subsequently docked 12 County Championship points for the upcoming season, as well as two points each in the men’s T20 Blast and One Day Cup, and signed up to an ECB business plan after recording an operating loss of £297,000 in 2024. The loss figure to be released in their upcoming accounts will be more like £1million.

In response to the crisis, a group of passionate figures from the club, including sponsors and former players, among which Prior is a leading figure, wrote an open letter urging the club board to resign. For Prior, however, removing the board is about more than holding those who presided over financial mismanagement to account. It’s about changing the culture at the club from one that’s become "poisonous", to one of trust and transparency.

“I caught wind around Christmas [of the crisis] but you’re never quite sure what to believe,” says Prior. “Unfortunately this cricket club right now, the gossip and the scaremongering is just incredible, and that needs to stop.

“What we’re hearing is that people knew about this for a very long time. I’ve spoken to people inside the club who have stated clearly that this is a really unnecessary thing to happen. This could have been avoided really easily with just the simplest amount of governance or challenge or leadership actually asking a question about what was actually happening. We’re hearing the club didn’t even have management accounts for most of the summer last year. That’s just the basics, real basics.”

‘No one person is bigger than the club’

The governance story at Sussex is one reflected in other places within the county game. Well meaning leaders who care deeply about the clubs they’re in charge of, but who don’t necessarily have the business experience or skills to lead them through a turbulent financial landscape, are struggling through. At Sussex, according to Prior, that fear of failure has led to an administration which has eaten itself from the inside out.

“No one person is bigger than the club,” says Prior. “I think there have been people in positions, who have been looking over their shoulder and making sure that they’re okay, rather than the club being okay. I think there’s been a fear to get people in that can help, because they’re worried that their own position will be lost. It’s fiercely unfair, and it’s also wrong.

“What we’re doing is getting together an outstanding group of individuals who have had huge success in their own business lives and bring a huge amount of experience and expertise and care for the club. But we have to let them help. They want to help, but we have to let them and put the right people in the right positions first and foremost.

“We recognise that there are good people on that board who are doing brilliant work with disability cricket, with the foundation, those areas of the club which are actually going really well and their positions should remain. But those accountable for getting us in this mess, how they can sit there is quite incredible.”

The effects of the financial hole Sussex are now in will be felt in every corner of the club, from members to the staff at Hove to the players. Those who are in the final year of their contracts may well be able to find more secure salaries at other counties once those opportunities can be explored from June 1. Players who signed contracts set to end in 2026 according to most club releases include rising stars at the club, like off-spinner Jack Carson, and all-rounder James Coles, as well as senior figures like captains John Simpson and Tymal Mills.

The timing of the crisis is at odds with Sussex’s on-field performances, having been promoted from Division Two at the end of 2024 and finished in fourth in their first year of Division One last year. It’s a dramatic turnaround from the club which won just two Championship games from the end of 2020 to the beginning of 2023.

“We went through years with Bob Warren and Rob Andrew where they didn’t spend a penny and it was terrible,” says Prior. “We lost everything, we had teenagers who were really guided terribly and it was a really really poor time for Sussex Cricket…

“This club has been mistreated for a very long time. Our agenda here is not an individual agenda, it is with Sussex Cricket at front and centre, it needs to be dealt with and handled with respect, with process with strategy and a clear level of professionalism which is going to take us forward. What I wouldn’t want anyone to think is that this is just a hand grenade being thrown on a cricket club by us. It’s quite the opposite.”

‘I’m not trying to take anyone’s job’

Following the initial letter sent by the group, chair Jon Filby stepped down from his position, leaving vice-chair Martin Richards to take over on an interim basis. Shortly after, John Barclay, a non-executive director and former club captain also stepped down from his position. The club called a members forum which took place on Monday (February 9), attended by Richards, as well as interim CEO Mark West and men’s head coach Paul Farbrace, to allow members to ask questions regarding the club’s financial position. According to Prior, that meeting achieved little by way of transparency.

“Within the first 10 minutes, you knew immediately that it wasn’t the right forum for an honest, transparent conversation that needs to be had,” Prior says. “Questions were dodged time and time again, there was no detail. There wasn’t one person from the finance department sat at the top table when all the questions were about the club’s finances. I find that incredible.

“There are people who have to be held to account, and as a board of directors you are all in… I think people left knowing no more than when they first arrived.”

Yesterday (February 12), Prior and a now expanded campaigning group – which includes the CEO of Webtrends Optimise, Matt Smith, a leading sponsor at the club – sent another letter, this time asking for a meeting with Richards to discuss the club’s financial situation and its next steps in more detail. While the group’s primary focus is to get the remaining board members to step down before the club’s AGM at the end of next month, Prior is keen that the campaign is about what’s best for Sussex, rather than personal agendas.

“I’m not trying to take anyone’s job, and I’m certainly not trying to invite myself to the party,” says Prior. “My only intention here is to make Sussex CCC the club that I’ve known since I was 11 years old, and back to a culture that I believe is what Sussex Cricket is all about.

“I know people have this view that I’m wanting to take over Sussex Cricket and run it myself, I think it’s really important at this point that people understand that that is not why I’m involved in this. I’m not going to put my name forward for a position on the board. I firmly believe that Mark West needs to remain in position as CEO. And I firmly believe that Paul Farbrace needs to remain in position in his role, for the stability and the good of Sussex Cricket.”

West is the figurehead the campaigning group have picked out to lead Sussex out of the trenches. He joined the club as interim chief executive in October 2025, two months after Pete Fitzboyden stepped down from the role. The reasons for Fitzboyden’s departure have still not been made public, with ‘personal reasons’ cited at the time. Now, West – who has previously held senior roles at retail houses Stanley Gibbons and Harrods, as well as served as a trustee of the Sussex Cricket Museum, has been thrust into a difficult situation, picked by both club and campaigners as their designated leader.

Farbrace’s position as men’s head coach is also central to this story. As a trusted figure at the club, he’s led them to on-field success, as part of a five-year strategy he is entering his fourth year of. He’s signed key players on long-term deals and has been a clear-headed voice throughout the last couple of weeks. Speaking to The Telegraph yesterday (February 12), he described a club in “shambles”, and said he would be willing to accept redundancy if it meant keeping his playing group together. However, as a big figure on the county-coaching circuit, his salary reflects his standing. Given the restrictions on player and staff salaries at the club, his would be a big chunk to take out of that.

These are details that Prior and the rest of the letter’s signatories are keen to iron out as soon as possible. At least six members of the board will see their terms come to an end at the club’s AGM at the end of March. However, given the proximity to the season, that will give little time to establish stability off and on the field.

“They [the board] have made decisions which have put this cricket club into a really bad position,” says Prior. “If there were players not scoring runs, there would be decisions made on them immediately. They don’t get to say ‘I’m retiring at the end of the year so I’ll just play a couple more months’ – so why should the board do it? The arrogance to go ‘we’re going to go to the AGM and choose our moment to walk off into the sunset’, actually you have to be held to account.

“The other thing, quite frankly, is time. We can’t just wait another month. That’s not in the best interest of Sussex Cricket. The fixtures have come out, the team are playing warm-up matches while that [the AGM] is going on, and they’re into the season the week after the AGM. We don’t really want all of this kicking off then. We want Mark West to be able to focus on the important matters at hand, and getting into the business of moving the club forward, not having to deal with all of this and dragging that on for another month and a half.

“We need to draw a line in the sand now and we need to be able to put the right people in the right places to support Mark West to get the club out of this mess.”

While the picture at Sussex is to some extent unique because of how vocal the group campaigning have been, and a history at the club of coups and governance instability over the last three decades, it fits into the wider picture of struggling non-Hundred host counties, at a time where cash from franchise sales should be hitting the game.

“There are a lot of counties that are struggling, I’m not suggesting that other boards are at fault or anything like that,” says Prior. “But there needs to be an injection into the game because county cricket is so important to so many people and needs to be protected and looked after, because the game is moving forward at a rate of knots.

“If we’re not careful, it’s going to be left behind. That’s why we’re so keen that Sussex isn’t one of those clubs and we want to put the necessary things in place that give it the best chance.”

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