Mike Gatting played for Middlesex between 1975 and 1998. Former England captain Mike Gatting and a group of high-profile former Middlesex players have written to members after calling on the club's chair to resign, saying the club has been "poorly led for too long".

Gatting and former England and Middlesex players Mark Ramprakash, Mike Selvey, John Emburey and Clive Radley, plus West Indies legend Desmond Haynes, say chair Richard Sykes has rejected calls to commit to standing down.

Middlesex begin their campaign in Division Two of the County Championship against Gloucestershire at Lord's on Friday. The 11-time county champions have been in the second tier in five of the past six full seasons.

"As former players of Middlesex, we have become increasingly disturbed at the way the club has been allowed to sink to its current level," the letter says. "The players are a product of their environment and in areas where the standard of coaching has been poor, the players have not been sufficiently challenged resulting in inadequate standards becoming the norm, insufficient to compete at the level to which we should aspire."

Middlesex declined to respond formally when approached by BBC Sport but are open to meeting with the group. They will begin the new campaign under a new coach after former New Zealand batter Peter Fulton was appointed in February. Richard Johnson left last June after a run of poor results and Dane Vilas had been in interim charge since.

The letter comes at a tumultuous time for the Lord's-based club - and follows financial issues at Sussex and a reported revolt by former players at Lancashire, external. As part of a view to securing private investment, Middlesex are looking into moving away from their current home where they have been long-standing tenants of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) for 160 years. Though they have made recorded profits since, they were fined for breaches of financial regulations in 2023 amid financial struggles.

Chief executive Andrew Cornish is currently on a leave of absence, external amid an investigation being carried out by the Cricket Regulator. The absence of a CEO makes decision-making at board level difficult.

In the letter, the former Middlesex players are critical of the fact only one member of the club's board, former England bowler Steven Finn, who joined in 2024, has playing experience in first-class cricket. It is understood no other players have applied in recent years. Radley, Emburey, Selvey and Ramprakash have all had stints as Middlesex president since 2013. Gatting was on the club's board until recently.

They have called on the club's members to attend this month's Annual General Meeting "in numbers" to "seek answers". Middlesex committed to a governance review at a recent members' forum.

"Middlesex was once a byword for excellence in the game, a club with a proud history of success and a strong, competitive culture brought about by hard work on and off the pitch," the letter said. "Instead, around the counties the men's teams now are variously regarded as 'a soft touch' and 'lacking fight'.

"Middlesex is first and foremost a cricket club, but the leadership lacks any real cricketing knowledge. From a grassroots perspective, we've been promised many times that there are good, young players coming through.

Yet despite having a catchment area that is perhaps the most populous and diverse in the country, the club is consistently failing to convert this talent in the way that other counties, often with less resource, have been able."