Daniel Gidney, Lancashire’s embattled chief executive, is under investigation by the Cricket Regulator after he labelled a group of club legends “old, entitled white men”.
Lancashire have been in crisis in recent weeks as a group of rebels – led by David “Bumble” Lloyd and Paul Allott – has taken the club’s board to task, accusing them of prioritising business over cricket.
With board positions up for election, Lloyd applied, but revealed he had been dismissed out of hand in a short email from the club’s human resources department. He described himself as “flabbergasted” and “embarrassed”.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Gidney dismissed the rebels, saying: “This feels a bit like, ‘I’m an old, white entitled man that wants to get on the board of the club’.”
Gidney, who announced last month that he would be retiring at the end of the year, added: “They [the rebels] acknowledge that it is not legally binding but they want to put pressure on the board to resign. Effectively that is bullying and intimidatory behaviour.”
The rebels, in a letter seen by Telegraph Sport, have complained to the Cricket Regulator about Gidney’s comments on the grounds that they are discriminatory and risk bringing the game into disrepute.
The regulator declined to comment to Telegraph Sport, but it is understood that the rebels have received confirmation that the matter is being investigated. Lancashire also declined to comment.
Lancashire have had to hold four special general meetings since last summer, including two in one evening in April. The club’s annual general meeting is on Monday, sandwiched between two matches of a Vitality Blast double-header at Old Trafford. The rebels are calling for this meeting to be adjourned as the bank holiday slot does not provide sufficient time to discuss the matters at hand at a complicated time for one of English cricket’s most storied counties.
Lloyd and Allott’s group has also called for a fifth SGM for a no-confidence vote against the board. In response, the board said that it needed ink, rather than digital, signatures, despite this not being the case for other recent SGMs. The SGM has been delayed until after the AGM.
Lancashire announced their accounts for 2025 last week, which looked positive on the surface, with an operating profit, although the rebels argued that deeper analysis revealed the club would be in a difficult financial position were it not for the sale of stakes in the eight Hundred franchises. The position is unlikely to improve this year, as Lancashire do not host a Test match or a money-spinning concert.