Stewart, 61, final week accomplished his 11-year stint because the membership’s director of cricket, after overseeing their third County Championship triumph in consecutive seasons, and the fourth of a tenure that started in 2013.
He resigned from that full-time function for private causes, together with his spouse Lynn at the moment present process therapy for most cancers – a state of affairs that induced him to take a go away of absence in January 2023.
“You have to perceive this membership,” Stewart mentioned again in April, when the membership’s ideas first turned to succession planning. “That may be a large factor: the expectation, the dimensions of it, the notion of this place. Due to this fact, in case you have been in and round this place… I believe it provides you an actual headstart, when you perceive every little thing that’s anticipated of Surrey and the Kia Oval.”
Now, below the brand new association, Stewart will work on the membership for a set variety of days a yr, charged with overseeing the continued success of the lads’s elite sport alongside the lads’s head coach Gareth Batty and membership captain Rory Burns.
“Everybody is aware of my love of the membership and what it means to me and due to this fact I am more than happy that the membership wished me to proceed on this new function that has been created,” he mentioned.
“With this new set-up, I firmly imagine that we will proceed the success at Surrey that we have seen in current instances. I look ahead to persevering with my working relationship with Gareth, Rory and the workforce.”
As a consequence, Stewart will proceed to advise on the Surrey Expertise Pathway, with the intention of sustaining the circulate of gifted cricketers who’ve the power to signify the membership throughout codecs, and in the end England.
“We fully understood and accepted Alec’s resolution to step again from his Director of Cricket function firstly of the season however we all the time wished to retain his experience and his influence at Surrey,” Oli Slipper, Surrey’s chair, mentioned. “We have had glorious conversations with Alec round a standard floor that labored for him and for the membership and I am thrilled to say that we’ve discovered a job that works for all events.”
Steve Elworthy, Surrey’s CEO, added: “Alec has performed a pivotal function within the success of the membership over a few years, not simply lifting trophies however the conveyor belt of expertise that has progressed via the Expertise Pathway. That he’ll proceed to form the lads’s skilled arrange, albeit in a modified function, is good for the membership.
“We is not going to be changing Alec however can be trying to people already on the membership to tackle new tasks. The foundations of the success of the elite group have been constructed by Alec and we’re more than happy that we’ll retain his help sooner or later.”
His appointment means the Stewart household’s affiliation with Surrey will lengthen into its eighth decade subsequent season. Alec’s father Micky, after whom the pavilion on the Kia Oval is known as, started his 18-year taking part in profession on the membership in 1954, earlier than taking on as supervisor from 1979 to 1986.
Stewart himself performed for the membership between 1981 and 2003, and had the principle gate on the Vauxhall Finish renamed in his honour in 2006, whereas his brother Neil is a longstanding coach within the membership academy.
