T20 goes north

To be fair to Northants and Kent, they pushed Surrey and Yorks harder than one might have expected. But I said at 2pm this afternoon that Kent were doomed when I saw them on Sky taking the field in shirts bearing the name of a building company that went into administration two weeks ago with the loss of 220 jobs. A fateful omen if ever there was one.

Too short a time to find a new sponsor, of course. But most cricketers are superstitous souls. Surely you print new shirts minus the doomed sponsors name or you put tape over their logo, as Muslim cricketers do when their club is sponsored by a beer company?  You don't take the field advertising a company that's just gone bust and has made 220 people redundant. It's bad karma and an invitation to trouble!

There are also plenty of suppliers, small firms and single traders in the Canterbury area who will now not get their invoices paid, some of whom may well go bust as part of a chain effect. If I were one of them, I'd have been well pissed off to see Cardy's name not only all over Kent's shirts but all over the boundary boards, too.

I hope Cardy don't still owe Kent CCC money. Wasn't there a Sussex sponsor went bust a couple of seasons ago which cost the county a six figure sum in unpaid sponsorship fees?

Thanks for filling in the missing detail, s&f.

Did Sussex still wear Farnrise's name on their shirts and continue to advertise them on the boundary boards at Hove after the company had gone into administration and all of its staff had been sacked?

I bet they didn't. Not even Sussex would be that insensitive.

Here is the story about 'Cardy'.

www.constructionenquirer.com/2016/08/15/kent-contractor-cardy-confirms-administration/

It seems construction companies have financial difficulties on a fairly regular basis.

In the Farnrise story, the article states that all the tell-tale signs appeared one year before they collapsed in 2014. No idea
what the situation was with Sussex financially.

When the original deal was signed it was the largest sponsorship deal in the club's history. That lasted from 2010-2012.
www.sponsorship-awards.co.uk/sp_blog/news/farnrise-in-major-sponsorship-deal-with-sussex-ccc/

Then a second deal was signed, 2013-2014, taking up the 2 year extension. Hopefully, that was where the club lost their
money and not before.

www.sussexcricket.co.uk/news-1/farnrise-confirmed-as-major-sponsors-for-another-year

Sadly, given the lack of financial transparency that besets county cricket, Members and supporters, once again, have little clue
of what occurs at their club. The financial sum lost was never offered and probably never will be. It simply disappeared into the
ether of non-transparency accounting.

Given the potential large sums involved, should that be allowed? This is not just a problem for Sussex Members but at all the other
17 counties where accounting practice still resides in the dark ages compared to PLCs, for example.