FDI bowls cricket over

We are familiar now with overseas investors moving into UK sport, with foreign ownership of many Premiership football clubs - just ask Jim O’Neill and the Red Knights what they think about the subject. Breaking news this week shows that this approach is moving into cricket, as Durham County Cricket Club is now more than 90% owned by the Indian media figure Gautam Radia and his brother Hiren. Their stake in the county that has won the county championship for the last two seasons cost them just short of £2.5m.

Their motivation? - well, it is not unreasonable to suppose that Indian businessmen have a genuine passion for the sport, although they may find themselves watching cricket in Durham in rather different weather conditions than they are used to. But Durham is part of a group of counties, who own Test match venues, currently examining the structure of county cricket and exploring the prospect of a new Twenty20 tournament that could be a big revenue earner. It would be modelled on the Indian Premier League and there is a suggestion that while the clubs would retain 51% ownership of the business, 49% would be sold to investors who could make a big return on sponsorship, advertising and sale of the TV rights. So the investment into the club now enables it to develop the facilities needed at the beautiful Riverside ground for hosting major matches like an Ashes test in 2013, as well as to develop the commercial potential of new developments in the game - and also provides the Indian investors with the potential for a future stock market flotation of the club from which they could make a rewarding profit.