Aussie cricket at the crossroads as fallout from Channel 7-CA bust-up threatens to tear game apart

Two years into a six-year deal, Channel 7’s relationship with Cricket Australia looks beyond repair. And like a broken marriage, sometimes it’s better to end it early.

Channel 7 cricket commentators Tim Paine, Glenn McGrath, Mel McLaughlin and Ricky Ponting. Picture: Tony Gough

Channel Seven’s bitter relationship with Cricket Australia has become untenable and it’s threatening to poison the game.

It’s not true to say the sooner they part ways the better cricket will be because the game will take a major financial haircut if Seven manages to blow up its contract and Channel 10 or 9 land the rights in a cut-price deal.

But, like most loveless marriages, the financial cost of breaking up might be worth it in the name of long-term prosperity if cricket can find a happy new partner.

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Aussie cricket is sure to be better off with a happy new partner.

Two years into a six-year deal, Seven’s relationship with CA looks cooked beyond repair.

The thought of four more years of “costly cricket sucks’’ headlines is cricket’s greatest fear because it could tear the game apart by downgrading the present and the future.

For the sake of everyone bar the lawyers something must give ... soon.

Seven will cover this summer but there is rising doubt they will be around for next year’s Ashes.

You can’t publicise private text messages in Federal Court as Seven have done and expect to ever again have a solid working relationship because every future conversation they have with CA, from the most informal email to high powered meeting, will now be shrouded with legal fears.

From the moment those text message were published the CA-Seven relationship became a marriage of inconvenience.

It turned from “us’’ into “us and them’’ and their conversations will now be as rigid as neighbours who once went to court over the height of their back fence.

Yes, the summer has been framed around India’s needs, but that’s hardly a surprise.

Many have said Seven are simply bluffing looking for a pay cut. That’s not true.

Deeply in debt and losing $60 million a year on cricket, Seven are in bail out mode.

They have already contacted cash-strapped Channel 10, offering the Big Bash which 10 could not afford.

There is blame and solid arguments on both sides in this dispute, but a pivotal question is whether Seven would be so aggressive if the entire network was not so financially imperilled.

The answer is almost certainly no.

Seven is right in its accusation that the summer schedule, including six white-ball games before the Test, was framed around India’s needs, and that is no fast breaking news story.

Eighty cents out of every dollar raised in cricket is raised in India. We need them far more than they need us. We bend for them in the way they used to do for us. It’s unfortunate but it’s life.

Seven can rightly argue Australia should not place the interests of a rival nation ahead of the game’s free to air cricket broadcaster, but this is cricket baby, a game of a million threads and a world away from the AFL, which controls its entire game.

From the time they swooped on the rights in a war room on the Gold Coast during the 2018 Commonwealth Games, buoyed as they were by high ratings for the Games, there was a feeling that Seven never really kicked the tyres and looked under the bonnet before they bought their new car.

Now everything from the tennis ball on the tow bar to the dice hanging from the rear-view mirror are under scrutiny because they realised they have paid too much.