CASH CRISIS
On-the-nose Aussies may ruin TV rights windfall
AUSTRALIA’S ball tampering affair could have multimilliondollar ramifications for cricket officials trying to sell a suddenly unsellable team.
Cricket Australia officials are locked in discussions with a raft of broadcasters that were tipped to pay up to $150 million a year for the next six seasons in the new television rights deal. Bidding has not reached the heights expected and one of the reasons was the current side has a turn-off factor attributed partly to the poor behaviour of the likes of David Warner.
Cricket Australia reportedly told networks to resubmit their offers last week because no bids from the free-to-air networks were deemed to be acceptable.
Controversy in cricket can be a perverse stimulant for television interest.
There were fears people could walk away from the game when South African captain Hansie Cronje was exposed as a match fixer in the year 2000.
Yet the next season in Australia crowds and television ratings rose with general interest in the game and all of its scandals. But the ball tampering incident is not seen that way.
Social media has been clogged with protests from fans saying they will never watch or support the team again.
Cricket Australia has chosen to split the rights into a group of 11 packages, enhancing the fact that most bidders — including Channels 9, 10 and 7 plus Fox Sports — will secure some rights.
Channel 10 is reportedly finding it difficult to stay in the race for Big Bash rights after doing a fine job with the product for the past five years.
Ten purchased the Big Bash for $100 million for five years — $20 million a year — but CA was hoping to get almost treble that figure this time.
AUSTRALIA is facing a public relations disaster if it proceeds with a plan to give confessed cheat Cameron Bancroft a sixfigure pay rise.
Bancroft was set to be included in Cricket Australia’s national contract list for the first time after playing eight Tests since his debut against England at the Gabba earlier this summer.
While the final list is not set to be finalised until next week, Bancroft was expected to earn a low-level ranking and a national contract around the $600,000 mark. But his future is now under a cloud and Cricket Australia will stand accused of not being hard enough on a self-confessed cheat if it includes him in the new contract list.
While others may have hatched the plan to tamper with the ball in the Cape Town Test, Bancroft pulled it off — or tried to. There is a school of opinion that Bancroft was the victim of his junior status in the team by being asked to commit a crime no one else wanted to do.
This is to underestimate his age — 25 — and that he has been floating around the national cricket scene since his junior days.
The owner of a commerce degree, he is no wide-eyed teenager.
Though the leadership group is in the gun several other team members outside it were guilty of throwing the ball to Bancroft during play. Their actions will also come under scrutiny.
It will be interesting to see what view the selectors take on the ball tampering affair.
Chairman Trevor Hohns, who is in South
Africa, is a noted stickler for good behaviour and has been known to take a dim view of player misdemeanours.
Meanwhile, a disgusted Simon Katich believes Cricket Australia (CA) has “no option” but to sack Steve Smith, vicecaptain David Warner and coach Darren Lehmann for allowing ball-tampering to occur. Former Test batsman Katich said he was “sick to his stomach” when he woke up to the news from South Africa yesterday morning.
Katich — who played 56 Tests for Australia between 2001 and 2010 — said CA had to act faster than promised by CEO James Sutherland.
“I think when Cricket Australia front the media, they’ve got no option but to stand down and then sack Smith, Warner and Lehmann,” Katich said on SEN Radio.
“They’ve got no option because this was premeditated and calculated at the break and those guys are in charge of Cameron Bancroft behaving the way he did. It’s a bigger problem than that, he’s been instructed to do this and anyone in cricket knows the captain and coach are in control of what happens in the team.
“I love Steve Smith, but unfortunately he’s made a serious error. If CA come out of this and condone sledging, they condone blatant cheating, then the message they send to the thousands of kids that they want to aspire to wear the baggy green is a far worse message than a few guys losing their jobs.’’
Smith denied Lehmann had any role to play in the incident but Katich said he doubted that was true.