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Gloucestershire cricket are investing £3.3m in creating four “international class changing rooms” this winter, the club’s chief executive Neil Priscott has said.
The county club have been exploring the possibility of moving from historic County Ground home in Bristol, with a site at Swanmoor Stoke on the edge of the city being explored.
However Priscott told BBC Radio Bristol’s The Pavilion show that the refurbishment work would ensure the club’s current ground is made “future proof” whether a move happens or not.
“It’s about providing the very best facilities we can for our domestic and international cricketers, male and female,” Priscott said.
“What essentially it does is future proofs us for attracting the very big England matches but also future World Cups.”
Bristol will be hosting six matches at next June’s ICC Women’s T20 World Cup – two of those double headers.
England, Ireland and Scotland will also co-host the Men’s T20 World Cup in 2030 with Priscott – who was appointed in his role at Gloucestershire permanently in February – said they want to put Bristol in the “best possible position” to host.
“We understand there is a project group looking at a potential stadium move for Gloucestershire, we’re cognisant this is potentially many, many years in the making,” Priscott said.
“We have to ensure where we are here is absolutely showcasing top-level cricket to the very best that we can and we cannot sit still in the provision of our facilities.”
August has been ‘difficult’ – club chair
Gloucestershire are due to receive £400,000 from the sales of teams in The Hundred, after the England and Wales Cricket Board sold stakes in all eight teams in the competition earlier this year, raising around £520m to be split across the game.
Chair Peter Matthews said the money would help the club become a “very financially sustainable, profitable business” and be used to pay off existing debt.
“We are expecting The Hundred money to land in the not-too-distant future and the first thing we’ll do with that is pay off the debt, at which point you have a very financially sustainable profitable business,” Matthews told BBC Points West.
Matthews said the club had done “reasonable” on attendances this year and that other commercial areas going well were putting the club on a profitable footing.
“What pulls us down is the fact we’ve got a very large debt and we’re paying a lot of interest on that debt.”
Rex FeaturesDespite Gloucestershire winning six of their eight matches through August to book a place in the One-Day Cup quarter-finals, Matthews said it had been a “difficult” month for the county with the County Championship on pause while The Hundred takes place.
Gloucestershire have hosted only three games in Bristol – with one of their home matches against Derbyshire taking place in Cheltenham during the annual cricket festival.
“It’s a difficult month for anybody who’s not a Hundred host in that there’s not an awful lot of cricket in what has historically been a massive month for cricket,” Smith told BBC Points West.
“When I was a boy [there was] Championship cricket right the way across August, you’d be able to see cricket on any day of the week.
“Here at Bristol, we’ve got three days of cricket in August which isn’t great really – [and] we played one of the games at Cheltenham.”
That being said, Matthews reiterated a message out of the club earlier this season that if The Hundred was to expand in the future, Gloucestershire wants to be included in the conversation.
“That remains an important part of our strategy,” he said.
