The man who would be king of cricket

"I said at the start of the season I want to see cricket, which I believe is the national sport, challenge football and I was called an idiot," he said. "Vic Marks said it would never happen. I challenge that.

"Thirty years ago, football was sinking fast and athletics and showjumping were sexier sports. People were put off by the miserable things that happened. The game was on its knees. The grounds were awful.

"Then Heysel and Hillsborough happened and the Government forced football to improve its grounds.

"Most cricket grounds are dire but there are people who like cricket and we've got to get them involved and encourage them to come. At Surrey we've doubled our membership and we're now embarking on a £20million rebuilding of the Oval.

"On the sub-continent they make cricket accessible. There are scores of grounds. They love the game and we've seen the Indians and Sri Lankans who live here flocking to our grounds in the NatWest matches."

It is expected that he will be officially nominated to challenge MacLaurin within the next month. It will then be put to a vote of all 18 county chairmen - plus MCC and the minor counties - in September.

Soper calls himself "a visionary" and is a man in a hurry. Two years ago he contracted prostate cancer, which spread to the bone, but after being recommended to see an expert in Houston by former Prime Minister John Major, the ex-president of Surrey, he is now on a new drug which guarantees him six more years, possibly more.

He keeps himself fit by swimming 26 lengths a day, and has only recently retired from playing cricket, primarily as a batsman, with Locks Bottom in Kent .

Today he will be welcoming his guests to the Surrey committee room, on the top of the red brick Victorian pavilion, but MacLaurin is not expected to be present.

He has not attended England v India games in the NatWest series because he does not get on with Jagmohan Dalmiya, the controversial former president of the ICC who is now chairman of the Indian Board.

Ironically some leading figures in the ICC believe MacLaurin may be a contender to take over as the boss of the ICC in three years. And to do that he has to retain his job as chairman of the ECB.

He is campaigning for an eightman executive to run cricket on a PLC basis, with two members from outside the game. "We have to be accountable," he said. MacLaurin is a young-looking 65 and went to the public school Malvern in Worcestershire and played cricket for the first team.

He was called up for the RAF in 1956-58 and joined Tesco in 1959, where he was chairman between 1985-97. He was knighted in 1989 and made a Life Peer in 1996.

In Who's Who, his hobby is listed as golf and he plays regularly in Valderrama in the Algarve.

In contrast, Soper attended state schools, Ashburton Junior School, John Newnham secondary and John Ruskin Grammar and he is proud of it.

He says his hobby is cricket and he has never been invited to submit an entry to Who's Who.

"I am always accessible to the press," he said. "We've got to talk the game up, not knock it down. We don't have to get people to push out statements.

"Alistair Brown made a world record of 268 runs recently and the TV channels hardly mentioned it, including Channel 4 who have otherwise done a great job covering cricket."

Soper's favourite word is " tiddlers". "They are the ones I want to do something for, the tiddlers," he said. "We've got to give them a chance to play the game and produce a few heroes. We can do it."

And what about his chances? "I'm closing the gap," he said. "Fast."