From an eternally-packed Twickenham to the queues snaking around Lord’s, Wimbledon and Wembley. From American advances on the Premier League to hordes of children around the world proudly wearing shirts of Premier League teams. There may be the sense that this country is going to hell in a handcart, but sport in the UK is in glorious, joyful advance. And everyone, globally, wants a piece of it.

It is why Richard Thompson, sitting atop English cricket and witnessing this mighty flexing of financial muscle, can watch with pleasure as the game close to his heart takes a substantial slice of the action.

Defying all predictions, Thompson, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, has seen his organisation raise a staggering £520million of foreign investment when they put The Hundred under the hammer recently. A limited-overs competition that hasn’t always been embraced — and which did not even exist five years ago.

The target had been £350m — and some within the game believed that was an ambitious figure. But when word went round the globe that 49 per cent of shares in the competition’s eight city-based franchises were to be auctioned off, interest surged.

All of a sudden, many of the planet’s richest wanted in. Big tech and big Indian wealth craved a slice of what was seen as a very British pie. Vindication was almost instant.

‘We attracted £500m of investment into this country,’ Thompson explains. ‘It’s the equivalent of Nissan building a new plant in Sunderland. It should be the lead story on News at Ten.’

Thompson and his team had carried out their due diligence ahead of the sell-off, bringing in US merchant bankers Raine Group, who sold Chelsea to Todd Boehly’s consortium and a stake in Manchester United to Sir Jim Ratcliffe. But he believes the opportunity to invest in Britain itself played a huge role in what was to come.

‘For cricket to get that level of inward investment shows confidence not only in the British economy, but in how we execute, the value of the Premier League, the competitions we have here,’ Thompson says. ‘There is a fan loyalty that you just do not often see elsewhere. A tribalism. Regardless of how our national teams are performing, we still sell our stadiums out. Wembley, Twickenham, The Oval, Lord’s — even if the England teams are struggling.’

And then there is the history. ‘We invented team sports from scratch,’ Thompson adds. ‘We brought so many things to the world: Shakespeare, The Beatles, the internet, team sports, and we still have the ability to leverage value from that.’

Thompson spent 12 years as chair at Surrey before heading north of the river to Lord’s. ‘The Oval always brings this back to me,’ he says. ‘Before there was a Wembley all England internationals were played there. Before there was a Twickenham all rugby was played there. The only reason Real Madrid play in white relates back to the Corinthian Casuals, whose home ground was The Oval. It was the seat of team sport. We invented team sports from scratch in this country. Rugby, cricket, football. We are the home of sport.’

Shouting about one’s own successes is not a very British trait, but Thompson believes the evidence is all around. ‘It’s also how we execute,’ he says. ‘We do beat ourselves up as a country but London 2012, World Cups, the Euros — whenever there is a major event here we do it well. We love sport and we have shown that time after time. People go because it’s part of our fabric. You could host the World Championship of tiddlywinks here and it would sell out. It’s a great national asset and it’s undervalued.’

In these fractured times, Thompson is also a believer in what sport can help achieve on the global stage.

‘There’s a soft power,’ he explains. ‘The relationships you can build on behalf of your country and the people you meet and speak to are extraordinary. When I am in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, cricket gets you into rooms no other sport can.’

Thompson was in a room of a very different kind when vindication arrived. It was the second day of the auction. Stakes in Oval Invincibles and Birmingham Phoenix had already gone for a combined £100m. The early signs were good as the jewel in the crown, Lord’s based London Spirit, entered the fray. ‘I was going into the tube for an MRI scan,’ Thompson recalls. ‘I’ve got a dodgy knee — meniscus tear — and from the time I went in to the time I came out the highest bid had gone up by £100m.’

Thompson helped land a lot of foreign investment in The Hundred, which launched in 2021

Thompson is proud to have attracted so much foreign investment to British shores

After an intense two-and-a-half hours, the victors were a Silicon Valley consortium featuring the chief executives of Microsoft and Google, and the price for 49 per cent was no less than £144m. ‘You’re not allowed a phone in there because it’ll blow the thing up. But the bids just kept going up and up and up. When I heard, it was a moment I won’t forget.’

It was also a long way from November 2022 when, less than two months into his role as the man at the top of a then in-crisis English cricket, Thompson had made an ‘instinct-based’ call not to sell the whole thing — clubs and competition, lock, stock and barrel — to a private equity firm for £400m.

When the final bids landed, £520m had been raised, which in turn valued the franchises alone at £975m — and they still own the competition.

‘One team in the Indian Premier League, Lucknow, had just sold for close to $1billion when we got the bid in 2022,’ Thompson explains. ‘I remember thinking, “We just can’t be that far behind”.’

Now 58, Thompson is well-versed in the art of judgement calls. After leaving school at 16 he set up and sold two businesses before switching his attention to talent management.

Merlin Elite became another success story, building an impressive, high-profile portfolio. ‘In 2013, M&C Saatchi wanted to buy 100 per cent and I said no because I didn’t see the value,’ he explains. ‘I decided to sell 60 per cent and hang on to 40. The aim was to make the 40 worth more than the 60. Ten years later I sold the 40 for significantly more than the 60. You have to back yourself and on this (the Hundred) we had to back ourselves. It’s instinct but it’s also stats-based.

‘The Northern Hemisphere has the best time zone for broadcasters and we have a cricket-loving culture. We have tribalism, which is a national asset. We have iconic venues. Our women’s game is growing exponentially. Cricket will be an Olympic sport in 2028, Birmingham has the largest population of Pakistani people of anywhere outside Pakistan. We did our homework and we knew we had enough competitive tension.

‘You could sense the US interest. This is franchise sport. You can’t get relegated and the Americans love that. We felt like we had something. We had an idea of the value — but in life you always need a bit of luck and we had that. All the stars aligned. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity and we packaged it like that.’

Thompson said of the United Kingdom: ‘Whenever there is a major event here we do it well’

Thompson — who is keen to emphasise the extraordinary roles played by CEO Richard Gould and director of business operations Vikram Banerjee — is refusing to get carried away, perhaps again using lessons learned from a life in business. ‘We haven’t popped any corks yet because we haven’t completed or exchanged,’ he says. ‘I’m 100 per cent sure, but there’s no victory lap yet. We had 120 interested parties and only eight got something, so that means 112 didn’t.’

That final stat suggests an opportunity to expand. ‘Who knows?’ says Thompson. ‘Watch this space.’

He is, however, clear on many elements. ‘The big names will come,’ he vows. ‘Without a doubt, we are now No 2 to the IPL. We had to do this now. If the Big Bash in Australia or the Major League in the US had got ahead of us, we would have been playing catch-up. We now have to attract the best and we will. It’s a matter of time until the best Indian players are here. It will become a given, like it is in the Premier League, that the grounds sell out — and that will happen quickly. There’s a big increase in the salary cap this year and when the changes come in properly next year the wealth will be there to attract the world’s best.’

That wealth will soon make an impact elsewhere, with the windfall to be shared among the 18 first-class counties, Marylebone Cricket Club and recreational game.

‘The 51-49 split will make a difference to every county,’ says Thompson. ‘If Worcester need to look at leaving New Road because it gets flooded, they can now do that. But the real legacy will be in four years’ time. What have we got to show for it? Has the money made a difference? Are more people playing the game? Does that increased talent pool mean our men’s and women’s sides are winning the Ashes more regularly? Are the grounds better? Are the rights worth more? Is cricket the summer sport? History will not judge us kindly if we can’t demonstrate that.’

There are clearly few limits. ‘I can see a Champions Trophy where the Hundred winners play the IPL winners,’ he continues. ‘And one legacy of this has got to be a covered stadium. Melbourne, a city, has got two. We, as a country, don’t even have one. Look at the impact at Wimbledon. We would have won the men’s Ashes last time had it not rained at Old Trafford. It has to happen and the stats point to there as a venue.’

After creating a perfect storm, perhaps it should come as little surprise that one of Thompson and his team’s next missions is to stop the rain in Manchester.