Kevin Roberts' cricket crisis evaporates

In his striking alienation from clarity, Cricket Australia chief executive Kevin Roberts remains an astonishing figure.

The Indian men’s tour of Australia, he now says, is a “nine out of 10” chance of proceeding in November, beginning with four Test matches, then three One Day Internationals. Even with negligible crowds (and ticket sales – after CA shares them with the venues and players – are extremely low margin anyway), that’s nearly $300 million of broadcast revenue that is either no longer in peril or, more likely, never was.

With cricket’s financial emergency now facing a 90 per cent likelihood of extinction, the Australian Cricketers Association and Cricket NSW both seem prudent for refusing Roberts’ proposed 25 per cent reduction to their remuneration and funding.

Conversely, Cricket Victoria, Cricket Tasmania and the South Australian Cricket Association look profoundly foolish for copping distribution cuts worth nearly $10 million in the current financial year, which is a lot of money no longer headed for grassroots cricket. The Western Australian Cricket Association quite brilliantly agreed to take a cut if everyone else did, which of course they didn’t.

Worst of all, Queensland Cricket surrendered on Monday. Another $5 million lost, some of it to community clubs. QC had been steadfast despite CA’s gunboat diplomacy in threatening to deprive the Gabba of the summer’s opening Test, as is (winning) tradition. That was the hollowest threat, of course, and typically outrageous behaviour from Jolimont Street. CA forgets the states are not its provincial subsidiaries, but its owners. Hey, nearly all the states have forgotten it too!

Again, with the evaporation of Roberts’ confected emergency, on what actual basis is CA continuing to pursue reduced distributions to states and, indeed, players?

And how do Cricket Australia’s directors now feel about the needless crisis – replete with emergency board hook-ups and thousands of wasted hours – they were dragged into by their flappable CEO?

In Thursday’s News Corp tabloids, Roberts confessed to having “two regrets from his handling of the coronavirus crisis that’s rattled the game over the past month”. The first was “over-communicating to states about CA’s plans and confusing them” and the second was “not enough communication with our people in the days leading up to the stand downs”.

How wonderfully apt that Roberts is bemoaning both his over-communicating and his under-communicating. Never before have we seen someone speak so much to say so little.

He talks and talks and talks – in his asinine marketing verbage – at state association counterparts but still hasn’t furnished them with the financial data they asked for seven weeks ago.

The people Roberts has chosen to surround himself with are no better.

As for “not enough communication with [his furloughed] people”, that lament contradicts his contention to Gerard Whateley on April 22 that “the vast majority of our people… are very comfortable with how we're working through this”. That was “the reality of the situation versus what is sometimes reported [because] stories of harmony don’t necessarily sell”. You are reading correctly that Roberts told an eminent sports broadcaster the cricket media had made this all up. How is the cricketing public supposed to take such a person seriously?