Cricket Victoria set to cut 20 per cent of staff amid coronavirus impact
Victoria’s peak cricket body is set to lay off at least a fifth of staff in coming weeks as Australian sport continues to be hit hard by the pandemic.
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Cricket Victoria is reportedly set to lay off at least a fifth of its staff over the coming weeks as Australian sport continues to be hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
Cricket Victoria chief executive Andrew Ingleton told Leader it was incumbent on the organisation to respond to current and future challenges presented by COVID-19.
“We also need to ensure Victorian cricket is in a position to rebound when levels of normal life return,” he said.
“Our response involves some really difficult decisions across the organisation and we’re working through those at the moment.”
Cricket Victoria currently employs 140 full-time staff.
Leader has been told staff could start being made redundant in coming weeks.
Cricket Victoria declined to detail just how much the pandemic had impacted its bottom line.
It comes after Cricket Australia stood down 200 staff on 20 per cent pay earlier this month.
Like Cricket Australia employees, Cricket Victoria staff are reportedly upset with how quickly the organisation has pulled the trigger on cuts compared to other states.
Staff said they felt let down by senior management, the board and overall governance at Cricket Victoria and wished the executive would have backed them in to ride out the impact of the pandemic for another few months.
“They just simply haven’t backed their people,” one employee said.
“The Victorian cricket community’s trust in their governing body will take a huge blow from this, it’s the local club volunteers that will be hit hardest by a lack of support from Cricket Victoria in the future.”
Former Victorian batting great Dean Jones also laid into the organisation earlier this month, rescinding his life membership and labelling the administration “poor” during a radio interview.
It’s been a tough 12 months for Victorian cricket’s governing body after reporting a loss of $1.38 million last financial year.
If costs associated with a drastic organisational restructure in mid-2019 weren’t excluded the loss would have been more than $2 million.
The restructure saw Cricket Victoria absorb the functions of the Stars and Renegades BBL club’s boards and chief executives, including the associated high performance, commercial business, event management and marketing functions into its operations.
It also recently absorbed the responsibility for the management of Victoria’s Premier Cricket competition.
Mr Ingleton said in last year’s annual report he was “confident the difficult decisions … (would) better align organisational structure to core priorities and ensure a sustainable financial platform to allow (continued investment) in these strategic areas”.