The Wicked Cricket Column

Am,

If you have some further and closer knowledge on it then fair enough, I thought the final game of 2008 against Yorkshire and the post-match ceremony was about him handing over the captaincy rather than him retiring, I’m sure he wasn’t actually retiring at that point. I agree his form had completely gone that season, only one half-century in the CC.

The problem with time is that truth does some very strange things where it can become distorted or even forms out of thin air. I discovered this to my chagrin when researching that Sussex CCC Museum booklet about the 1997 Members Rebellion. You would interview four different people who were closely involved and gain four different stories.

I did take a closer look at the Adams situation and the timeline appears to go something like this.

The Sussex Hierarchy Summer of 2008

: In mid-summer, David Green becomes ill. A little later (I presume on doctor's orders) he steps down as Chairman and tells the Club hierarchy in late July. It appears this decision was after Adams had decided he would retire. He says, he had been promised an off-the-field job By Green.

www.cricketworld.com/sussex-ccc-chairman-david-green-stands-down/16698.htm

: The then Vice-Chairman Richard Barrow and Club treasurer, Jim May, go head-to-head and, unexpectedly, Barrow loses and May is appointed the new Chairman (mid August). It was decreed that May's RBS banking experience would make him a more solid and stable financial helm-steerer than Barrow. Usually, the VC gets the Chairman's job, so I have some sympathy for Barrow.

: Adams, a little later, is told he has no staff job at the Club after enquiring.

: My google search then discovered one newspaper (Daily Telegraph) that stated Adams then decided he “may” continue on as a player for one more season. Presumably, this was contemplated after realising there was no off-the-field job for him at the Club.

: Adams is hurt, let down and upset that the Club has turned him down. Two months later, he is then appointed Surrey CCC Coach in early December 2008. He grabs the chance. I feel his decision "to tap" RHB was partly down to the hurt he felt at being turned down by Sussex CCC. Given all the on-field success he had brought to the Club, his feelings are understandable.

Like the film Sliding Doors, the Club went off on a new and what turned out to be a path of steady decline. What has always interested me is, if Adams had been given an off-the-field Club job, he would not have gone to Surrey and his whole post-playing career path might have been quite different. Who knows how he would have faired at Hove? Probably, the tapping of RHB burnt his bridges for any future opportunity to return.

I would suggest the truth lies somewhere amidst the above.