Interview with Chris Taylor part 4

How did your business come about?

I started Pro Coach with Andrew Gale and it has grown really well. It is now fifty per cent owned by Yorkshire CCC but we currently have 55 coaches working for us throughout the county and are working with around five thousand youngsters. Simon Guy, who has recently joined Derbyshire, of course, was doing some work with me and there’s quite a few guys with first-class experience.

Then in 2010 I was asked if I knew anyone who had a use for a massive two thousand square foot building outside Headingley cricket ground. I had the idea of starting a cricket equipment business and made a Dragon’s Den style pitch to the father of one of my friends, who invested in start up companies, to go into partnership with me.

At the end of it, he said yes, and we moved in and gutted the place. All Rounder Cricket Ltd opened on March 11, 2011 and we recently learned that we are now the fifth or sixth biggest cricket equipment supplier in the UK. That’s something I am very proud of and we have around 270 clubs signed up around the country as clothing and equipment suppliers.

The business now has ten full-time employees, while there’s a further five at Pro-Coach. As Managing Director of both, the hours are long but it is very worthwhile. My brother is physio at Sheffield Wednesday and more recently I have gone into partnership with him and we have eight physiotherapy clinics around Yorkshire under the banner of Sano Physiotherapy.

There’s not enough hours in the day…

But you still manage to find time for cricket?

I do. My wife and I moved to Lightcliffe, where my father-in-law had played for the village team. In 2010 the club finished near the bottom of the second division of the Bradford League.

I attended my first committee meeting in the wooden shack on the boundary edge. When I said that I saw the club in the medium to long term competing in the top half of the first division I think some thought I was crazy.

Last season I skippered the side as we won the Priestley Cup and came near the top in the league. I am proud with how we have turned the club around. I have a house on the boundary edge and it is a lovely club, but the secret now is making sure that I keep the right work/sport/home balance, as we all work to live, not live to work.

I am grateful for what cricket has given me and I enjoy being able to give back. I learned from being coached and helped by Geoff Boycott, Mike Atherton and Michael Vaughan and if I can do something similar with youngsters and get them started in the game, I feel I am doing my bit.

Do you have any remaining sporting ambitions?

I do. You know, even after what happened at the end of my time there, I remain a Derbyshire fan and I look for their scores before Yorkshire’s. I’d have loved to skipper that side, but one day I would love an opportunity to be involved in some other way, perhaps on the board, if I was ever asked to be involved.

I’d like to think that my business experience might be of use at some point, and Kevin Dean, a good friend of mine, is already there.

Who knows?

I can’t finish the interview without asking you about the men who will be taking Derbyshire forward in the coming years on the coaching side.

Pop is brilliant! He’s a top bloke who helped me at Derbyshire and I know how highly he is regarded as a coach. I have no doubt that he will do an outstanding job, because people work for him and understand what he wants to do. He was a one hundred per cent player and you will get exactly that from him as Director of Cricket.

He’s recruited really well though. Steve Stubbings is one of the nicest guys I have ever met and I think he will take to his role really well – having done very well with the second team last summer, of course. I know John Sadler very well and he really knows his cricket. He is an excellent coach and understands batting, with the ability to explain to people what they should be doing differently when things are going wrong. Ant Botha has done well too, while Simon Guy is a fantastic coach who will really get people working at their game.

Put it this way, if I was playing under those guys, I would excel, because as well as being very good coaches, they are excellent man managers.

The club has a very bright future and they are now going about it in exactly the right manner. In my spell at the club, apart from me there was really only Wayne White, Jake Needham and a very young Paul Borrington who were relatively young and in the first-team picture.

It’s all changed now and very good to see.

I wish them every success in the coming season and those ahead.