NEW Essex chief executive Derek Bowden is hoping to attract new supporters from across the county and beyond – and that could include playing Twenty20 games at the Olympic Stadium.
Bowden, who began his new role at the Essex County Ground at the start of this month, is "looking up and down the A12" as he bids to bring more supporters through the gates.
The former Ipswich Town chief executive spoke exclusively to the Chronicle on day three of last week's opening LV> Championship clash with Gloucestershire – a rain-affected day which attracted a small crowd to Chelmsford.
It comes in the wake of the club's financial figures which showed that some 79 per cent of its money from ticket sales came from T20 games, compared to just seven percent from the Championship.
The 6,500-capacity Essex County Ground is regularly filled for the club's T20 games, and Bowden believes playing a couple of games a season at the Olympic Stadium would boost the club's fanbase.
"It's very early days but we are looking at it," he said. "Not to relocate from Chelmsford to the Olympic Stadium as some people have thought, but for one or two games a year, maybe a T20 game – a league game as it were – and maybe a showcase game. It would be quite interesting to use the Olympic Stadium. It won't be easy to make it work because of the cost of dropping in a pitch and the cost of staging a game there will be high, but if we could get 30,000 people watching Twenty20 cricket there a couple of times a year that would be good for us, good for the legacy and good for that part of London as well.
"I think there's been some feasibility work done over the years but we'll look at it properly.
"We're in no hurry to do it, but the fact that the Mayor of London thinks it's a good idea and I don't think West Ham would oppose the idea is encouraging but we've got to make the maths work."
The area of Stratford – where the Olympic Stadium is – actually falls under the umbrella of the Essex Cricket Board, and Bowden is keen to widen the appeal of the county.
"The East London boroughs are a big opportunity both in terms of player development and audience development," he added.
"The county used to go on tour, but we do that less now. We play mainly at Chelmsford, but there's a massive potential audience and market in the east end of London and that part of Essex.
"And up the A12, up towards Ipswich, there's another big area. Suffolk and Norfolk don't have first-class teams and people there do want to watch cricket, and it's a relatively short journey.
"So part of my remit I think is to look up and down the A12 and down in the City of London, corporately as well as playing cricket in that part of the world, up to my old stomping crowd of Ipswich and beyond."
The game against Gloucestershire ended in a draw after rain and bad light affected three of the four days' play, and Bowden admitted he had hoped for brighter weather to start the campaign.
He added: "You can never tell with April.
"Last April apparently – I've forgotten now – was really warm and then it became very wet and we lost games through rainfall here.
"Whether it's best to get the rain out of the way early or not I don't know.
"It probably is. If this is the worst of the weather we're going to have in the spring then it'll be very good.
"If it was 15 or so degrees out there we'd have had more people through the door and we'd be looking at it differently."
Part two of our interview with Derek Bowden will be in next week's Chronicle.
