As the Ireland men’s cricket team returns to action this week in a three-match T20 series against England, long-time Cricket Ireland chief executive Warren Deutrom is contemplating his next steps, having left the sport’s national governing body at the end of August.
During his 19 years at the helm of Irish cricket, Deutrom helped Ireland to achieve full membership of the International Cricket Council (ICC), becoming one of only 12 Test-playing nations. He also lobbied the government to construct a 4,240-capacity national cricket stadium at Abbotstown, which is due to be completed before Ireland co-hosts the 2030 Men’s T20 World Cup.
Deutrom will continue as chair of the European T20 Premier League (ETPL), the long-gestating T20 club competition that will be played in Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands, which has financial backing from Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan.
Due to launch this year, the tournament has been delayed until at least 2026, and Deutrom speaks to BusinessPlus.ie on the day that Oakvale Capital was appointed to generate finance for the league’s six franchise teams.
Deutrom, who previously worked in events management for both the ICC and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), reflects on his departure from Cricket Ireland as “bittersweet” and says he was “incredibly fortunate and privileged” to hold the position for so long.
As to why he resigned, Deutrom says it was “largely the satisfaction of [achieving] so many long-held goals,” and primarily the national stadium, for which Sport Ireland recently submitted a planning application
Deutrom has weathered some controversy in his final years with Cricket Ireland, including the procurement of two Teslas as company cars and his decision to ask David Richardson, his former boss at the ICC, to apply for a vacancy on the board.
Support for Deutrom was also shaken by the last-minute cancellation of a series against heavyweights Australia last summer and the relocation of other home matches to England and Abu Dhabi due to “infrastructure constraints”.
He has spoken in the past about the prohibitive expense of hosting matches at the pop-up stadium in Malahide, where the T20s against England are taking place, but the completion of the Abbotstown stadium should end the days of scheduling uncertainty.
“I always felt that the lack of a stadium, permanent infrastructure, marked out Irish cricket as a minnow sport,” Deutrom says. “So that very significant investment coming from the Irish government served to underscore for us, or to confirm for us, that cricket is genuinely a sport of national significance.
“When [the stadium plans were] confirmed in the Programme for Government … that was a promise which I had committed to deliver for Irish cricket the day after we achieved full membership in 2017.”
His resignation was still a surprise to some observers though. “Initially, Plan A was to go through to the 2030 World Cup, but I guess over time, you begin to see the energy well is running dry.
“I didn’t want to be the person hanging around or hanging on by his fingernails [for] five years, drawing down a salary, hoping for the best. I simply couldn’t do that to Irish cricket.
"It’s too deeply in my bones, and I want to see it succeed.
“I guess I had to take the same approach to myself, by looking in the mirror, as I would take to any staff member whose performance I could see was beginning to lack the energy necessary to do all the things that Irish cricket needs to deliver.”
Ultimately, the ETPL was a major factor too. Cricket Ireland, Cricket Scotland and the Royal Dutch Cricket Association (KNCB) first announced the precursor tournament EuroSlam in 2019, and the concept was revived as the ETPL last year.
The years of false starts convinced Deutrom he needed to work on ETPL full-time to get it off the ground.
“Working from the corner office of Cricket Ireland meant I was only ever able to give it about 10-15% of my week. I firmly believe in the project,” he says.
“I mean, look, it was my idea. We were approached about eight years ago to see whether or not we wished to establish our own Irish Premier League.
"I felt that we didn’t have sufficient depth to make it happen – in terms of financial depth, player depth – but I strongly felt that a European Premier League would serve both performance goals for our players and coaches.
“It would be commercially attractive in time if it could be built, and it would serve an exceptionally important purpose of assisting in the development of the game of the world’s largest sport in front of the world’s second largest commercial marketplace [Europe] after the US.
“All of those elements, I think, make it a very, very strong proposition; it’s just that we didn’t have the runway in order to establish it this year.”
The postponement was reported to have blown a €700,000 hole in the Cricket Ireland budget, but Deutrom expects the organisation will return a surplus this year, although some cost-cutting measures were enacted.
Cricket Ireland is a co-owner of the entity behind the ETPL along with Cricket Scotland, KNCB and Bachchan’s Rules Sports Tech venture, but the tournament faces a battle for finance, players and interest with established leagues such as The Hundred and the T20 Blast in England, the Caribbean Premier League, and Major League Cricket in the US, which all take place during the summer months, covering much of the May to September period between them.
Having “as clear a window as possible in the northern hemisphere season” is important if the ETPL is to survive, according to Deutrom.
“Making sure that you have the right owners, both at a league level and at a franchise level, is extremely important, and if you do get the right owners on board, they can be the ones who assist in terms of promotion, attracting players.
“Obviously, what I have and what I bring is my relationship with the ICC and the other full members, which is obviously very current, bearing in mind the shortness of time since I actually stepped down from Cricket Ireland,” he says, adding he also has relationships with broadcasters and players around the world.
The ETPL has brought in Oakvale to emulate what merchant bankers Raine Group did for The Hundred, which secured a reported £500m in equity investment for its eight franchises this year – a substantial windfall for England’s struggling county cricket clubs.
Deutrom is taking “a glass-half-full approach” to launching the ETPL and is bolstered by his experience of proving doubters wrong in achieving Test status and securing government support for the national stadium.
“Every time somebody said to us, these things were not going to be possible, guess what? We make them happen. And I've always believed that with the talent, the strength, resilience and the innovation of the people in Irish cricket, we can always genuinely build it.
“Some things take longer than others. I'm not denying the fact that in an ideal world, we would like to have established this before now, but you learn lessons every single time you try to go to the well and things don't work out. You say, ‘Right, this is what we need to make it happen.’ So our strong view is it will happen in.”
Beyond establishing the ETPL, the next five years present some significant challenges for Deutrom’s successor as Cricket Ireland CEO: negotiating a new media rights deal, securing additional ICC funding, qualifying for the men’s and women’s 2028 Olympic tournaments, opening the new stadium, and co-hosting the 2030 T20 World Cup.
Deutrom also points to the continuing efforts to establish provincial teams for men and women and putting in place the necessary staff, governance and investment to sustain them, as well as wider efforts to consolidate the gains of the past decade.
“It’s not particularly sexy, it’s not the kind of stuff that you’re going to publicise in a press release, but the things that you refer to earlier on, ‘Oh, you haven’t been hosting much international cricket,’ etc. We’ve been hosting a lot of international cricket. It’s just that in some people’s eyes, it’s only the international men.
“Being a full member is so much more than just staging men’s international cricket, and while you’re building it, there’s not an awful lot to talk about, but you have to put those pieces in place.
“I would be confident that all of those elements are now in place that provide a foundation for my successor to build on that and make it all sing.”
Asked what he thinks his legacy will be, Deutrom points to the greater ambition he helped to instil in Cricket Ireland. When he joined as CEO in 2006, the body’s main goal was for the men’s team to be successful within the ECB’s county competition.
“Within probably three years, we had set out our stall to be a Test nation. So for me it was trying to get Irish cricket to think differently, to raise its sights, to think of itself as the 10th best team in the world rather than the 19th English county, to believe in itself, to see that the talent was there.
“All I did was galvanise that belief and play a role in bringing it to fruition, but if I’m going to pick one thing, it’s ‘Let’s believe in ourselves because we can do this.’”
Photo: Warren Deutrom. (Pic: Tom Honan)
