Meet the new boss of Sussex County Cricket Club

Name: Dave Brooks

Age: 41

Born: Maidstone, Kent

Others: Elizabeth Egan, (very tolerant) girlfriend of 18 months

Lives: Cookham, Berkshire

Drives: Golf

What’s on your iPod? Lots of Hed Kandi compilations

Favourite restaurant: Aubergine in Cape Town, and any pub in Britain with good food which is dog friendly.

Who would you invite to a dinner party? My Dad, who died 15 years ago but would be so proud of me now, David Lloyd, Geoffrey Boycott and David Gower.

Sussex County Cricket bosses had members choking on their tea break biscuits with the shock appointment of a man with no sporting administration background to the club's top job. Business editor SAM THOMSON caught up with new chief executive Dave Brooks to ask what brought him to the county ground and to examine his plans for the future.

“I always thought crickets clubs were very conservative and I am not a particularly conservative kind of person. When push came to shove I thought they would bottle it.”

Dave Brooks’ little office at the county ground in Hove is a Brian Lara-slogged six away from his previous role as chief executive of an AIM-listed bakery company, where he rubbed shoulders with big City investors including advertising guru Maurice Saachi.

It would be harsh to say the place hasn’t been developed since the first match was played there in 1872, but the peeling white paint, cramped interiors and rickety wooden stairs are hardly the stuff of 21st century sporting environments.

On first impressions, you might think Brooks is there to shake the place up and drag it kicking and screaming into the new millennium.

With his flowing blond locks, trendy glasses and tieless shirts, the 41-year-old – and this is only an observation, not an insult – looks every inch the advertising executive.

However, if there was ever any worry that he’d aim to scrap test matches in favour of the flash and brash of the limited-overs game, hire scores of short-skirted cheerleaders or lobby for advertising breaks every 20 minutes to appeal to US audiences, they are soon dispelled.

Brooks is bright, warm and affable, with a deep passion for cricket, especially as a player.

He is opening batsman for his home village Cookham Dean in Berkshire, although “like any batsman I don’t actually like batting. My favourite memory is bowling some very dodgy offspin and taking 7-60.” Brooks is especially fond of the four and five-day version of the game so beloved by traditionalists.

One of his first major decisions since taking on the chief executive’s job in January was to scale back the development plans for the ground.

Instead of a massive scheme featuring a five-storey stand, offices, flats, a restaurant and conference centre, the revised proposal will be limited to two storeys and there will still be room at the Cromwell Road end for deckchairs on the grass bank.

The new scheme is part of Brooks’ desire to balance the club’s traditions with the commercial opportunities it must explore if it is to thrive in the future. It’s a new and unfamiliar challenge, which is his favourite kind.

Born in Maidstone, Kent, Brooks left school at 18. He said: “I could have gone to university but didn’t really fancy it really as I felt I was ready to go into work.”

His first job was as a trainee accountant at Kent council. He gleefully admits that he “didn’t do a lot of work” in the two-and-a-half years he was there.

Brooks said: “Councils are much more commercial now but back then I spent most of the time playing cricket and football for the council team.

The good life can become too much of a good thing, however. Brooks said: “I looked round and thought that there was some really great people there who were stuck in their job. I didn’t want to work in the public sector all my life.”

He got a job at tissue maker Kimberley Clarke, where he spent 15 months as a cost accountant. He enjoyed working for a manufacturing company but found his options limited.

Brooks explained: “I fell in love with manufacturing.

I like the fact there is something tangible produced. But at KC if you were not a graduate then you weren’t going anywhere.

There was a glass ceiling.”

Then he had “six months of hell” working for Magnet Kitchens.

Brooks said: “I joined about a week after the management had bought themselves off the stock market for £600 million, which was about a week before the start of the last recession and people stopped buying kitchens.

“Every day I would walk in wondering if I would be the next person to be let go.

He left Magnet to join leading food company Brakes Brothers. “The guy who recruited me was called Richard Ashness. I was 22 and over the course of the next 13 years he became my guiding light and mentor.”

Studying part-time, Brooks eventually qualified as an accountant and in 1997 bought a business with Mr Ashness, a company in Cardiff called Memory Lane Cakes.

He said: “It was a basket case, with a £33 million a year turnover but losing £2 million. The owners said we could have it for nothing as they would have closed in six months time.

“Even if it didn’t work out, I thought it would also be good experience for an accountant to go through receivership and administration.

But in the end we turned it around.

“In many respects it was bloody hard work but what made it less difficult was that it was a typical unloved subsidiary of a multinational.

“When we cared only about that business it blossomed. People started loving it again and we were profitable within six months.”

It was a good start but what followed was five years of up and downs. Brooks had to close a factory in Warrington and make 500 workers redundant.

He said: “It wasn’t the most pleasant experience I have ever had. But it is one of the things I have done in business that I am most proud of because everyone left with their head held high.

“It is easy when closing a factory to turn up, give everyone the bad news and leave it to others to deal with. We stayed on for two days a week for people to come to us with any issues, even though we didn’t have to.”

By 2002 the business was making a £2 million annual profit. It was bought by an AIMlisted media group and the new company became Finsbury Food Plc with Brooks as chief executive.

Over the next six years Finsbury grew by 10% annually, moving from a £38 million business to a £200 million powerhouse and spending £75 million snapping up rival companies.

Brooks said: “When it comes to doing deals you get better and better as you go along. Our biggest achievement came in 2007 when we bought a business which was twice the size.

“We carried it off, with knobs on. That was the only deal I actually enjoyed. Buying a business is a painfully slow and attritional process.

It is not normally fun but that was. That propelled us into the big league, making us number two in the cake market.”

Once the initial high of a big deal done well had dissipated, Brooks was on the look out for something new. Within six months of telling the Finsbury board of his desire to leave he was out.

“I did not have anything to go to,” he admitted.

Brooks didn’t let this worry him and, on a whim more than anything else, wrote to Sussex chairman Jim May after reading about Sussex’s former chief executive Gus Mackay’s departure on a cricket website.

He said: “He sent back a very dull application form. It took me about three hours and I almost didn’t bother. I didn’t think I had a hope in hell’s chance.” More than 200 people applied and 20 were interviewed.

Brooks was delighted to be called back for a second interview and staggered to be offered the post, which he believes is the result of lobbying by Mr May.

He said: “I always had a chance because the chairman was a big supporter but equally knew that he would have a lot of work to do to convince the board.”

His new job is totally different to his previous role. He said: “I came from a company with a £200 million turnover to one with £5 million.

If something cost £1,000 it used to be neither here or there but now it’s a big decision.

“That is a big culture change. The club is also run by its members so is naturally more risk averse than other businesses.

“Having said that, the club wants to progress and become more commercial and businesslike. We just need to get the pace right.”

Godsend Brooks admits that this summer’s match against Australia as been a godsend in financial terms.

He said: “It is a pretty tough times at the moment. Sponsorship and hospitality are never parts of a business that are immune from cutting.

“But the local sponsors have been as good as gold. You get the impression there is a hell of a lot more they will cut back on before they stop sponsoring the cricket.

“We have a fighting chance of breaking even this year but only because Australia is coming. That is a nice windfall this year which gives us 12 months to put together a business plan for the following three years.”

Over that time, Brooks hopes the stadium development will be finished and the club will explore new opportunities to work within the Sussex community.

He said: “I think cricket is a lot like rugby was about 15 years ago when they were introducing professionalism. We need to maximise our turnover while increasing our community involvement.

“Brighton and Hove Albion are much better than us at that but football has been doing it longer.

“I would like to see more three of four more indoor cricketing school around the county, a possible partnership with a minor county like Oxfordshire and further development of the existing academy in Guernsey.

“One of things that amazed me was the amount of sport in Sussex – cricket, football, Hickstead, Goodwood, horse racing. We need to look at ways we can link up better.”