One year into his Test career, Richie Benaud looked to his paymasters and sighed. Having played host to South Africa to a backdrop of deceit and back-stabbing at board level, Australian cricket was at one of its lowest ebbs. “I can assure you, there was nothing at all comforting about Australian administration at the time,” he wrote. Fast forward almost 70 years, and it seems not much has changed.
Kevin Roberts this week departed as Cricket Australia’s chief executive, having lost the confidence of the board, the states, the players and the staff at Jolimont over his handling of the coronavirus crisis. Where leadership calls for cool heads in a crisis, Roberts jumped at the shadows cast by Covid-19 and lost his in a panic that will define his legacy.
Roberts painted a fiscal picture so bleak it beggared belief. And it was here where he lost the support of those he needed in his corner. They simply didn’t believe him – or more pertinently, questioned his lack of transparency – when he said the pandemic had left the game in Australia broke. Somehow, despite signing a $1.2bn broadcast deal in 2018 and possessing almost $300m in cash and investments barely four years ago, the cupboard is now almost bare.
Roberts slashed the pay of 200 CA staff by 80% in April – yet cut his own by only 20% – while raising eyebrows with his estimate of an immediate $20m hit despite the near completion of a summer highlighted by Australia women’s T20 World Cup win. Some 150 jobs have been lost at state and association level around the country while more redundancies will take place this week. Community cricket has been left reeling. Domestic cricket and the women’s game will suffer reduced schedules despite Covid-19 descending during cricket’s hibernation seasons of autumn and winter. Nothing has yet been lost to cricket, but it seems everything is lost.
In the end, the straw on the camel’s back was Roberts’ dealings with the players. Australia’s cricketers are bound to an income model that tracks the revenues of the game. So the Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA) was awaiting keenly the contents of CA’s revenue forecast for the 2020-21 season. When it did come – belatedly – earlier this month, it was a strong shot of bad news, delivered in email form with scant context around a predicted 48% drop in revenue.
And that was it. Nothing more. The ACA chief executive, Alistair Nicholson, effectively dismissed the report, advising his members to not believe a word while lodging a formal dispute. It signalled the end of its already fractured relationship with Roberts, and by extension an erosion of its trust in the CA board. Roberts had to go, barely 18 months into his three-year contract. With little competition to speak of, fans have had to make do with the sport of administrative bloodshed. Roberts now joins Todd Greenberg and Raelene Castle on the CEO scrapheap, all three left to rue a once-in-a-lifetime health crisis for lifting the hood on Australian sport.
As the players brace for a pay war, and states wonder where their next meal is coming from, Cricket Australia is preparing the welcome mat for India, who have committed to touring this summer in what represents a $300m windfall for the sport. It’s not official yet, but there will be no hosting of the T20 World Cup for Australia later this year. But that is no bother to CA. Not right now. Only India matters.
The Indians will single-handedly ensure Channel 7 and Fox Sports pay close to full tote odds for the right to beam pictures into homes, regardless of whether fans are allowed into stadiums or not. But by then, chances are they will be. No wonder the states are furious about a Sheffield Shield season cut beyond recognition. No wonder the women’s game is asking questions why it is being made to suffer when Australia’s T20 World Cup win in front of almost 90,000 fans at the MCG should be the start of something new and wonderful.
Supporters of Roberts will point to him being made a scapegoat, a victim of circumstances. And they are right that the chairman, Earl Eddings, and his board are complicit in their approval of how Roberts steered his ship since taking over from James Sutherland. But though there is a new derriere in the sling in the shape of the interim Nick Hockley, and CA has a job on its hands to mend broken relationships and restore public confidence.
On the evidence of Tuesday’s media conference, it has some way to go. In the same breath as saying “we could have done our communication better”, Eddings lauded Roberts for being a “very good communicator”. While trumpeting a “significant shift” and a “new style of leadership”, Eddings conceded he is prepared to take “responsibility for everything”. He did make sense when he thanked Roberts for his service, saying the departing chief executive took the reins when Australian cricket was “on the nose” in the wake of the ball-tampering scandal.
It is to be hoped Hockley can quickly provide some new-found direction and clarity. Because Australian cricket is still on the nose.
