Next summer the Invictus Games will be coming to Birmingham – bringing legions of remarkable competitors with them. JON GRIFFIN meets the former cricketing star responsible for maximising the commercial opportunities of this unique event.
Tim Munton’s long and distinguished career in professional cricket brought him an enviable string of honours, from international recognition to county championship and Lord’s finals glory.
As temporary captain during the summer of 1994, the former England, Warwickshire and Derbyshire bowler helped steer the Bears towards their greatest ever season, picking up an unprecedented treble of championship, Benson and Hedges Cup and Sunday League success.
His name is etched in Edgbaston folklore as one of the mainstays of a Bears title-winning side which swept all before them more than 30 years ago, long before T20 and the Hundred dramatically changed the landscape of an English county summer.
Now, over three decades on and sitting in the inner sanctum of a corporate suite at his beloved Edgbaston, Munton is just as keen to talk about his latest sporting challenge as he is to reflect on a cricketing career which saw him twice selected for England against Pakistan in the test match summer of 1992.
Today, Munton, at 60, is contemplating a new sporting destiny with a significant difference – as the commercial brains behind an extraordinary sports spectacular which will see the eyes of the world once again focus on Birmingham.
Munton is leading the commercial team behind the Invictus Games, the international sporting festival for wounded, injured and sick service personnel and veterans, and their families – and the original brainchild of none other than HRH Prince Harry.
It’s another high-profile career opportunity for the genial Munton, who readily admits that his life has often been dictated by chance and happenstance as much as by raw talent.
“This is probably the highlight, if I’m honest, of my post-cricketing career,” he says.
“I wasn’t expecting it at this stage of my life. This conversation about the games started around three of four weeks before my 60th birthday just at a point in my life where I was talking about doing less and stopping chasing dream commercial roles in sport – and then this opportunity arose.
“It reinvigorated me really from a personal level. It has given me new energy and ambition. The games will be one of my proudest events to have worked on and helped deliver.”
The Invictus Games – to be held over eight days at the NEC and Sandwell Aquatics Centre next July – may not be quite on the same scale as the acclaimed Commonwealth Games of 2022. However, the long-lasting benefits to around 550 competitors from up to 26 nations – including competitors from the current conflict in Ukraine who will line up in the West Midlands in the summer of 2027 – are virtually incalculable.
The Birmingham games – secured for the region after the Midlands capital beat off Washington DC to win the rights to stage Prince Harry’s concept – are expected to bring more than 20,000 people a day to the city, with the consequent economic benefits for hotels, restaurants and bars.
And even in his seventh decade, his new commercial role with the Invictus Games has given Munton himself a fresh perspective on the transient nature of life in elite sport . . . and the stark realities after playing days are over.
“The perspective is massively different,” he says. “What these competitors do and achieve is way beyond anything I ever achieved. I was lucky. I was an able-bodied sportsperson who happened to play professionally, earned a living and loved it.
“The competitors at the Invictus Games may not be elite, professional sportsmen or women but they are just as passionate and equally, if not more committed. They see the importance of sport and the role it can play helping them to recover from physical and mental injuries caused serving their countries.
“But it also becomes an engager with friends, families and other competitors, giving them renewed purpose and supporting their journey of recovery – that is the power of sport.”
Or, as founder Prince Harry himself memorably said in a statement welcoming the games to Brum: “We have no doubt that the people of Birmingham will join in celebrating the unwavering respect and admiration we have for our veteran and service community, showing the world how their courage ignites hope and unites us all – something your city knows well.”
That courage will see wounded, injured and sick, military personnel and veterans – from amputees, wheelchair-bound competitors and many with hidden wounds – battle it out for medals glory next summer in a string of adaptive events including athletics, archery, cycling, indoor rowing, laser run, pickleball, powerlifting, sitting volleyball, swimming, wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby.
As the official Invictus Games website proclaims: “Here, effort matters as much as outcome. Every throw, stride and lift is a victory in its own right.”
It’s a sentiment shared by Munton, whose experience of elite sport has given him an invaluable insight into the mental challenges all sportsmen and women face at the end of their playing days.
“It’s really interesting, this synergy if you like between sport and the military. I have always been aware of that. Military careers do tend to change at a similar time to sporting careers.
“There are many from the forces background who in their 30s are looking for something different, wanting to move to another career, or sometimes forced into that. In many ways it is similar to the challenges faced by retiring sportsmen and women, albeit very different and more challenging for the service men and women leaving military careers through physical and mental injuries.
“I started (with Warwickshire) as a 19 year old. After three years I had had two consecutive seasons playing most of the first-team games, but I knew that wasn’t something that was going to be there forever – every sports person has the same challenge.
“I genuinely think I am lucky – you make your own luck, I do understand that, you have got to drive it. But there are plenty of better cricketers than me and there are plenty of better people than me in terms of commercial experience who haven’t had the opportunities that I’ve had.”
Munton’s latest career opportunity with the Invictus Games might never have come his way had he not decided to future-proof his life back in his 20s when he was first making his name in the precarious world of English county cricket as a promising fast bowler.
“I played in an era many years ago when we were six months on, six months off. In the context of that we would go and find something else to do in the winters or go overseas to coach and play.
“I had ten winters working with Bass Brewers. I took the view that I ought to try to start preparing myself for life after cricket whether it was at the age of 25 or 45. I did sales and marketing work for ten winters in a row, sometimes selling beer, marketing beer, or working with pubs and hotels.
“That gave me a grounding and a knowledge and experience of sales and marketing. When I eventually finished playing cricket I worked with the Professional Cricketers’ Association, mainly on the commercial partnership side.
“I did that for three or four years and then went into other things. I have worked for 23 years now on commercial partnership programmes in sport, particularly in cricket, football, golf and rugby.”
That background in sales and marketing first explored by Munton as a rookie county pro with Warwickshire ultimately landed the ex-cricketer with the opportunity of a job of a lifetime with the Invictus Games.
“It was the rugby role that I did that led me to a meet with the chair of the games, Vicky Gosling, in her role as chief executive of GB Snowsports. When she mentioned she was also the chair of the games I asked ‘where is the next one?’. She knew I was an adopted Brummie and said ‘crikey, if you don’t know where it is, we might have to think about doing things differently’.
“I started critiquing – not to get the job, but just sharing some thoughts about how they could do things differently. Six weeks later came a call asking if I would be prepared to consider putting a team together and deliver the ideas I had shared.
“I was honoured to be asked and put a group together, with particular Birmingham and Midlands experience, to approach the commercial opportunities around the games in a different way. I have no direct military experience but nonetheless huge respect and gratitude for the men and women who serve, and believe there is an opportunity to raise the profile of the games through educating the world of sport, competitors and fans alike.”
Now Munton is bracing himself for a new sporting challenge – arguably just as invigorating as taking on Pakistan in test matches in 1992 or leading the Bears to domestic glory with the treble-winning side of 1994.
“I started in September, and at the beginning it was a case of getting to understand it all, putting it all together and making some adjustments to what the commercial programme should look like. My job title is ‘strategic lead, commercial and marketing for the Invictus Games’.
“Broadly speaking, I lead the commercial team. I have a responsibility to make sure the numbers and the monies that are needed to deliver the games are achieved. It is mainly a sales role, selling the different opportunities for businesses and individuals to engage with the games to fund the delivery and leave a lasting legacy, particularly in Birmingham and the West Midlands region.”
Munton says his priority is putting together commercial sponsorships and partnerships, seeking brands and partners from the supply chain to the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces alongside more mainstream operators who will see the games showcasing “the amazing endeavour, the social impact and the amazing achievement of the competitors”.
“When I first got into the role it became apparent that lots of people were like me. I knew about the Invictus Games but I only knew it was happening when Prince Harry was being interviewed the news launching the games,” he says.
“Invictus is all about how sport enables the recovery of wounded, injured and sick sportsmen and women. I hadn’t properly understood what that meant and the impact sport is having on so many lives on a journey to recovery. It is an amazing event.
“This isn’t about elite sport. We don’t call the competitors athletes, we call them competitors. This is all about their endeavour, some of them very visibly wounded, others less so, baring invisible wounds from their service. It’s their endeavour, their commitment and their use of sport – whatever sport it might be – to both help them recover physically and mentally.
“Some of them have been in comas for months and taken years to recover from horrific injury. Some are double or triple amputees, many have more hidden wounds, but they all have amazing resilience. A lot of them also have a great sense of humour that helps them cope – you feel increasingly humbled being around them when you see their ability to get on and do, in spite of their challenges.”
Munton attributes Birmingham’s successful bid for the games largely to its close links with the military world, particularly to the Selly Oak and Queen Elizabeth hospitals where the wounded, injured and sick from the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan are treated. Also in the heart of the QE site is Fisher House, an amazing home from home for battlefield veterans and their families – so important when often the journey to recover requires many months of time in hospital.
“This is the only Fisher House outside America. Built because of the focus in the city of the work at the QE Hospital to treat the most severely injured from military conflict around the world,” says Munton. “It has had a strong connection with the Invictus Games over many years and were the first to be a commercial partner of the games in Birmingham.”
As the clock ticks towards a sporting spectacular unlike any other previously held in the Midlands, Munton is looking forward to playing his part in delivering a successful games.
“It was very much Prince Harry’s original idea, launched in London in 2014. He created something that is just amazing. I have met him only once, very briefly, but his passion and commitment is clear and infectious.
“It is still very much his baby. He very much deserves all the plaudits for creating it and for his support. It’s the reason it is where it is – he is a real driver of the foundation and the games.”
Munton, who combines his full-time Invictus Games role with other wealth management and agency work, is now looking forward to another busy schedule as he contemplates a year leading up to the Birmingham games.
“When I took it on, I thought this could be great. Two or three months in, it grabs you because you realise quite what this means. With the sad state of the world at the moment, it is more and more relevant.”
