Former England cricketer and veteran commentator Mark Nicholas has been elected as the next president of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC).
Nicholas will serve a 12-month term as president, taking up the post on 1 October. His appointment was announced by the current MCC president, Stephen Fry, at the club’s annual general meeting held Wednesday.
Nicholas, who was elected as a Member of MCC in 1981, is one of the most recognisable figures in televised cricket, leading coverage at the very top of the game across the world.
He moved into the media following his retirement as a cricketer when he played as a top-order batter and medium-pace bowler for Hampshire and captained England A.
Nicholas scored over 25,000 runs – including an unbeaten hundred for MCC at Lord’s against the 1985 Australians – and took 173 wickets in a professional career spanning over two decades. He also captained Hampshire to four major trophies, three of which came in finals at Lord’s.
As a broadcaster, Nicholas anchored Channel 4’s Test match coverage, which began in 1999, and he remained a permanent fixture on both sides of the globe for another 15 years, for Nine Network in Australia and Channel 5 in the UK. 
He presently works for Supersport in South Africa, on TalkSPORT’s radio coverage of England tours, and has previously featured on the world feed of the Indian Premier League. Nicholas is a regular on ICC commentary teams for their global tournaments.
His writing skills are no less noteworthy. Nicholas joined the Daily Telegraph upon hanging up his boots and went on to write a personal memoir (A Beautiful Game: My Love Affair with Cricket) that alongside other awards was chosen as the Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year in 2017. His long-term friendship with the late Shane Warne led to the pair co-authoring Warne’s compelling autobiography, No Spin, which was published to critical acclaim in 2018.
Nicholas founded Chance to Shine, the charity that has done work in bringing cricket back into state schools. He remains fully involved and is looking forward to developing a closer relationship between CTS and the MCC Foundation.
He first entered the MCC Committee Room while still a player, beginning a ten-year stint on the cricket committee in 1994. As well as three terms on the club’s main committee, he has also served on the Marketing and Laws, Spirit & Ethos sub-committees.
