Essex declare interest in Olympic Stadium

Essex have revealed an interest in staging Twenty20 cricket at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, East London, after the 2012 Games have been completed.

The club's chief executive, David East, has met representatives of Newham council and West Ham United football club, who have also expressed an interest in the stadium, to discuss how a joint bid might work. If it is viable, it will be submitted to the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) who are inviting proposals for the stadium's use after the Games.

In a press release, Essex declared they were looking at "the feasibility of turning the stadium in Stratford into a vibrant centre of sport, culture and education that could feature football, cricket and athletics as well as community uses."

"We are very much looking forward to exploring this with Newham and West Ham," said East. "Our home ground will remain at the Ford County Ground in Chelmsford, but it would be fantastic to be able to play some of our expanded Twenty20 cricket tournament at the Olympic Stadium. We have a very active development programme in the east end of London, and this would give us an ideal opportunity to extend our community work even further with a centre of excellence in the borough."

Graham Gooch, who is still heavily involved with coaching at Essex, was fully behind the idea. "I'm a big Hammers supporter as well as an Essex supporter," he told Sky Sports. "It absolutely makes sense that Essex, West Ham and Newham Council join forces to use the Olympic Stadium for sport to have a legacy for more than one sport on that stadium.

"I come from exactly that area. It would be good for sport in that area. It would raise the profile of cricket in east London, especially with the Asian population. It's a multi-dimensional, ethnic population there. We've raised a lot of players from there - Varun Chopra, Nasser Hussain [another ex-England captain] and others on our staff.

"We're not talking about it being our headquarters for Championship cricket - that's at Chelmsford. We're talking about playing limited-overs, Twenty20 cricket there. The timescale for us - June, July, August - is when West Ham wouldn't be using the stadium."

West Ham United vice-chairman Karren Brady said: "It's about realising the full potential of the Olympic Park. If achievable it is the ideal answer for those who, rightly, demand a sustainable legacy from the 2012 Games and not a white elephant."

Chief Executive of Newham Council, Joe Duckworth, said: "The last thing anyone wants is for the Olympic Stadium to lay idle. We were concerned about this when London successfully won the bid to host the Games. The only realistic solution is to make it work for a range of sports and community uses."