Following the ball tampering incident involving the Australia team during a Test match in South Africa in March of this year, Cricket Australia (CA), the organization responsible for overseeing cricket in Australia, commissioned a cultural review of Australian cricket.
The commission, which was conducted by Dr. Simon Longstaff of the not-for-profit organization, The Ethics Centre, and former Australian Test opener Rick McCosker, released a 145-page report of its findings and recommendations on Monday in Melbourne.
In its scathing summary of the state of the game in Australia, the commission had found, “Australian cricket has lost its balance and has stumbled badly. The reputation of the game of cricket, as played by men, has been tainted. 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.”
The report even noted that there was “strong systematic and organizational input” into the decision to tamper with the ball in the Newlands Test. It added that a culture of win-at-all-costs had permeated the team and players had been asked to play the role of the ‘mongrel’ in the disgusting act of sledging of opposing players.
A recurring complaint of the only 30 percent of current players who responded to the commission’s surveys or interview requests, was that they were viewed as “commodities of variable value” (measured in runs, wickets, matches won, and world rankings) and that they “count for little – perhaps for nothing – outside of those metrics.”
“Instead, they are led to believe that their worth resides entirely in their capacity to meet CA’s strategic and commercial goals to win matches and present a compelling product,” the report noted. Other findings concluded that there was a disconnection between CA and the state associations and the Australian Cricketers Association (which was involved in a bitter pay dispute with CA last year), and sponsors, who believed that their value was only viewed in financial terms.
The review proposed 42 recommendations to change the culture of Australian cricket including the establishment of an ethics commission to hold everyone in Australian cricket “responsible”; key player honours, such as the Allan Border Medal to reflect character as well as on-field performance; umpires to have the power to remove players from the field for excessive sledging or actions against the spirit or laws of the game; selectors take into account a player’s character as well as their skills when picking teams; and the role of vice-captain be de-coupled from that of ‘heir apparent’ for the captaincy.”
CA has announced that it supports 34 of the recommendations, is considering seven, and has rejected the one which would excuse players from international T20 matches to play Sheffield Shield and grade cricket. It also stated that due to the honesty of the report several sections (one report claims as much as 38) of the review had been redacted due to defamation risk.
As expected there have been calls for the resignation of the chairman of CA, David Peever, who was reelected for another three-year term at CA’s AGM last week. The call is surprisingly being led by Malcolm Speed, the predecessor of former CA chief executive, James Sutherland, who along with former coach Darren Lehmann, resigned following the ball tampering incident in South Africa. Speed, upset at Peever’s recent statement that the Newlands scandal was just a “hiccup” for Australian cricket, figures that CA has become too corporatized and the board should be run by “dyed-in-the-wool cricket people.“
As we here in the West Indies are only too well aware, calls for the resignations of cricket board chairmen following the release of reports into the operations of their boards only fall on deaf ears, and or, are met with stout resistance. Peever, who has declined to resign, has pointed out that it was CA that proposed the review since it needed to look itself in the mirror. He also stated that the one year bans imposed on former Australian Captain, Steve Smith and Vice-captain, David Warner, along with the nine month ban levelled on Cameron Bancroft, for the Newlands scandal will not be reduced.
In recent years, followers of the game in the Caribbean have been paying keen attention to the legal battle for control of the Indian Cricket Board and the proposals from the Barriteau Report for the restructuring of the management of West Indies cricket and Caricom’s attempts to have them implemented. They are still waiting, apparently in vain, for the latter to occur, as Cameron and Company continue down their own path.
Will the changes recommended by Longstaff and McCosker be implemented? Will the Australian cricketers stop sledging opposing teams? Will the players just remain ‘commodities’ in the eyes of CA? Time will tell.
