SYDNEY: Cricket Australia (CA) released the findings of the independent organizational review, which it voluntarily commissioned following the fallout of the ball tampering incident in South Africa in March 2018.
The objective of the 147-page review report was to dwell into the cultural aspect of Australian cricket and was carried out by The Ethics Centre led by Dr Simon Longstaff in association with former Test batsman Rick McCosker. McCosker conducted a player review featuring the likes of Australian men’s team coach Justin Langer, Test captain Tim Paine, fast bowler Pat Cummins, former players Shane Watson and George Bailey and women’s deputy captain Rachel Haynes. As many as 469 people were interviewed with a 58 percent response rate.
The report questioned Cricket Australia’s functioning as per its Ethical Framework in the form of ‘shadow values and principles outlining the board’s hypocrisy such as “command and control”, “only results matter”, “high performance is what we are here for”, “Australia needs us to win”, “individual first”, and “combativeness and aggression is good”.
The Ethics Centre commission accused CA of having result-obsessed approach which did not take ‘Spirit of Cricket’ or playing truly ‘The Australian Way’ into consideration. This is said to be one of the factors that led to the Newlands disaster, which saw Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft lose their places in the team courtesy lengthy bans.
“With the exception of CA’s own Board and its senior executives, the broad consensus among stakeholders is that CA does not consistently ‘live’ its values and principles,” the review states.
“CA is perceived to say one thing and do another. The most common description of CA is as ‘arrogant’ and ‘controlling’. The core complaint is that the organisation does not respect anyone other than its own.
“Players feel they are treated as commodities. There is a feeling amongst some State and Territory Associations that they are patronised while sponsors believe their value is defined solely in transactional terms. The group most critical of CA is the Australian Cricketers Association. The ACA’s negative assessment of CA is extreme, matched only by the positive assessment offered by the CA Board.”
The finding comes despite Cricket Australia recently announcing a bumper 2017-18 financially which was primarily due to record broadcast right deals. As a result, the impact of the controversial Argus Review of 2011 has been a mixed one.
While the participation numbers have increased and fan interest in the game has risen seeing the growth of the BBL and the WBBL, the board focused on business first than the sport itself following recommendations of having more outwardly corporate structures and goals. It doesn’t come as a surprise that CA and the ACA (Australian Cricketers’ Association) were at loggerheads in a massively publicised MoU players pay dispute from late 2016 to mid-2017 which ironically involved the then captain and vice-captain Smith and Warner, being at the forefront of it.
The commission also handed out 42 recommendations to Cricket Australia, most of which the board has already accepted or has in place, but needs to upgrade it. Interestingly, it only rejected two of them outright. Firstly, it involved not selecting those players representing Australia regularly in the Test and ODI teams in the T20I team due to sponsor and broadcaster commitments to be kept. Secondly, CA refused to divulge minute details of its regular meetings for the sake of confidentiality.
However, in a major development, CA supports the recommendation of forming a separate ethics commission to focus more on the cultural aspect of national teams as well as the Australian Cricket Council that can mediate discussions between the board, the state associations, the Cricket Umpires Association and the ACA. The growing gap between these four institutions was highlighted by the commission as well, due to which communication has often broken down, leading to poor decisions made.
CA chairman David Peever, who was recently re-elected to the post, apologised for the past and promised that cricket will continue to be Australia’s most loved sport in the future if all stakeholders reunite and work with a common purpose. However, he rejected ACA’s opinion that Smith, Warner and Bancroft’s bans must be reduced due to the findings of the report.
Prior to the release of the report, Paine and his Test deputy Josh Hazlewood released the 38-word ‘Player’s Pact’ for the first time in its cricketing history, which must be followed by each contracted player in the Australian team.
It goes as follows: ‘We recognise how lucky we are to play this great game. We respect the game and its traditions. We want to make all Australians proud. Compete with us. Smile with us. Fight on with us. Dream with us.’
