Cricket’s governing body is undertaking cost-cutting redundancies as part of a wider plan to decentralise the game.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chief executive Richard Gould informed staff this week that as a result of the “fast changing” environment in cricket, the governing body would be making internal changes that “sadly” would result in redundancies.

It is understood that around 15 roles will be made redundant, with more slimming down possible through natural wastage of staff, and that an organisational restructure has taken place mainly affecting the commercial and communication teams.

A company-wide redundancy process has been avoided. However, staff fear that this is the first of a number of rounds of redundancies with the sale of stakes of the eight Hundred teams underway.

At the end of that process, the running of the Hundred will largely be handed from the ECB to the host counties and their new investment partners, which could result in further roles being made redundant at the ECB.

‘Some roles at risk of redundancy’

In his email to staff, Gould said that the ECB would be “radically changing our investment patterns, with an additional £35 million of investment each year going to the network [the counties], including to turbocharge the growth of women’s cricket”.

He continued: “This needs to be balanced with our requirement to maintain financial reserves on behalf of the game. All this means that we need to be agile with our resources moving forward, to deliver all of our ambitions as part of Inspiring Generations [the five-year strategy ECB launched in 2020].

“As part of this process, sadly, we have also put some roles at risk of redundancy across the business. The proposed changes are to ensure the organisation is appropriately structured around our priorities, and the organisation is the right size with sufficient capacity to deal with new challenges as they arrive.”

Gould and chairman Richard Thompson, who were previously a partnership at Surrey, have made no secret of their desire to decentralise the game, narrowing the remit of ECB and handing responsibility to counties.