Cricket Australia board is pale, male and stale, says cricket writer

Melbourne, Dec.9 (ANI): The Cricket Australia board is pale, male and stale and lacks the courage of its players, says cricket writer Malcolm Conn.

Referring to the Crawford-Carter Report, Conn says the report has been scathing about the current board's lack of expertise, claiming it did not have important skills and was too heavily weighted towards small businessmen with little or no expertise at running large organisations.

Of 15 desirable board attributes, the report assessed only four as good elite cricket experience, understanding grass roots cricket, age diversity and geography.

By contrast six were listed as poor marketing, senior experience in organisations larger than CA, understanding media rights and values, international business experience, gender and multi-cultural diversity.

According to Conn, the 106-year-old monolith has been unable to properly sack itself and its rampant self-interest comes out clearly in its decision to reject a fully independent commission, which was a major recommendation of the Crawford-Carter report.

"The CA board was happy to pursue a scorched earth policy following the Argus review of last summer's Ashes debacle, replacing all the selectors and coach Tim Nielsen. However, the board has made a half-pregnant decision about the game's governance. It has demanded that at least one of the nine new directors be based in each state after voting yesterday to reduce the number from 14, says Conn in a write-up for the Daily Telegraph.

He believes that this is the governance equivalent of demanding that at least one player in the Australian team should come from each of the six states.

"If yesterday's board decision was applied to the Australian team beginning the second Test in Hobart today, one of the players would need to be sacked because Queensland is unrepresented," Conn says.

New CA board chairman Wally Edwards claimed it was "geographically" important for each state to retain a director because cricket is played around the country.

"That was a debated point. The Crawford-Carter report did discuss the subject," Edwards said.

"They said they could understand why we might vote to have one from each state but they preferred to have it open slather and if 10 or nine came from one state then so be it. But the board felt that in due deference to where we are now, where we have been going for 100 years, all states have all got an association and a management structure and it was felt that because cricket is all over Australia that it was a worthwhile addition to our bylaws to be able to say that there will be one residing in each state," Edwards said.

There are some important reforms. No director can have any affiliation to a state board, which currently nominates the directors, and there is a nominations committee designed to promote greater expertise on the board.

However there is nothing to stop the old boys' network from resigning their state affiliations and renominating themselves. (ANI)