2021 ANNUAL REPORT

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY CRICKET CLUB 2021 ANNUAL REPORT & ACCOUNTS 12 L I S A P U R S E HOU S E CHI EF EXECUT I VE’S REPORT Little did I realise at the time that reactivating our business in the Covid world of 2021 would, in many ways, prove to be more challenging. At the conclusion of the 2020 cricket season, we were very thank- ful that – due to the measures we had implemented and the support we had received – we could look forward with a degree of cautious optimism. However, within weeks a new national lockdown had been intro- duced.The impact on our winter operation was immediate and our non-matchday business was once again hit hard as Trent Bridge was closed to the public. Amidst this uncertainty, we took the decision to implement stringent cost control and freeze any signifi- cant investment across the business; a contributing factor to our strong year end result. When cricket returned behind closed doors in April, it did so underpinned by the processes, protocols and procedures we had worked hard to perfect during the final two months of the previous summer. Whilst it had been difficult to come to terms with not being able to wel- come spectators into our venue in 2020, hosting cricket in that way had become our new normal and many of our members and supporters once again took the opportunity to watch our early season Championship fixtures on the live stream. From the point that we were first permitted to admit a limited number of our members with social distancing intact in May, then man- aging significant demand with so little capacity for our fixtures in the Vitality Blast, it became apparent that the operational pressures were hugely complex. Interpreting and implementing stringent safety procedures was an arduous task and the need to com- municate and address queries from our members and ticket purchasers, often without having the answers, put a massive amount of pressure on our off-field teams. Scaling up in double quick time – a matter of days – for a government pilot event at near 100% capacity for the International T20 between England and Pakistan took a huge amount of preparation and flexible thinking on the part of our opera- tional staff. To then host aTest Match, our first since 2018, followed by four men’s and women’s double headers inThe Hundred along with simultaneously hosting three 50-over matches on the road atWelbeck and Grantham, a Blast quarter-final in front of 14,000 spectators and two County Cham- pionship fixtures with unrestricted crowds to end the season, was a monumental task. Trent Bridge has always been about its people, and our matchday work- force – in particular our catering staff and stewards, supported by our volunteers – are fundamental to our success. The wonderful intergenerational blend of young people taking their As I sat to write the previous edition of this report in the winter of 2020, I had perhaps permitted myself to believe that no other year could possibly compare with the enormity of challenges we had overcome in the previous 12 months.