Report aims to burst Aussie gilded bubble, but will it?
Bullying, arrogant and dictatorial. It’s not exactly what you would want to hear from an independent organisation you had hired to conduct an overview of your own, but that’s what Cricket Australia (CA) received from the Sydneybased Ethics Centre in an exhaustive investigation resulting in a 145-page report presented on Monday by review leader Simon Longstaff.
The report made 44 recommendations for the administration of the game at both domestic and international level in Australia to try to ensure that incidents like the ballsandpapering at Newlands which resulted in 12-month bans for captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner do not happen again.
CA chairman David Peever and his fellow board members are the only administrators left standing with head coach Darren Lehmann having resigned and CEO James Sutherland and high performance manager Pat Howard set to step down.
Peever was in bullish mood on Monday: “I and the board… would have preferred that the events in SA didn’t occur. But they did, and the silver lining is that it’s precipitated this work and a chance for us to have a good look at ourselves,” he said.
“We’re very committed to taking this opportunity to use the recommendations from the Ethics Centre report and how CA responded to each of them.”
Included in those recommendations is the suggestion that both selection and reward for players should include character and behaviour as well as merely runs and wickets. In other words, not only might a future David Warner not be selected, he would certainly struggle for honours at the glamorous, yearending Allan Border medal awards evening.
Longstaff also suggested it was important for umpires at club and state level to have the power to dismiss a player from the game for repeatedly infringing the laws or breaching the spirit of the game, even if it meant compromising the firstclass or List A status of the game. There were knowing looks and nodding heads when Longstaff suggested international players should participate in a minimum of two Sheffield Shield games for their state teams to prevent the “disconnect” between first-class players and the internationals who exist in a “gilded bubble”.
Another suggestion is that the appointment and role of the national vice-captain be “decoupled” from the captain’s.
The role is too important to be complicated by the incumbent also being the captain’s heir apparent.
Test captain Tim Paine again made appropriate noises on Monday: “We got a bit wrapped up in our own self-importance… it’s not our cricket team, it’s Australia’s cricket team,” he said. “For a little while we lost that. This coming season is more about giving back to our fans, getting outside of our bubble and thinking more of others.”
The Australian Cricketers Association (ACA), which fought a vicious and long-running battle with Peever and the CA board in 2017 over terms and conditions for all professional players in the country, claimed Monday’s report as “independent confirmation” of the aggressive attitude of the game’s most senior administrators in Australia.
ACA CEO Alistair Nicholson is pushing for an early end to Smith’s and Warner’s bans (due to expire in March) since they were “victims” of a culture created far above their stations. It is a hollow argument based on the fact that the national team are facing the very real possibility of losing to India on home soil for the first time ever if they are not in the team.
But support for the two players, and for Cameron Bancroft, who received a ninemonth ban, has been thin. Only 14 of 48 players asked to respond to the Ethics Centre’s survey bothered to respond. Those who did said the bans were “fair and appropriate”.
Peever was asked why he had not offered to step down, and whether he was embarrassed: “I am not embarrassed, I am not embarrassed at all,” he replied.
“I accept responsibility for what happened in SA but I am also very confident we are well positioned to move forward from here.”
This was despite the report’s concerns about the “commercialisation of cricket” ,a “win-at-all-costs mentality”, “multiple instances of disrespect running through CA” and the “normalisation of verbal abuse in men’s cricket… extending beyond player behaviour”.