Cricket Victoria 2020-21 Youth Premier League awaits funding call
Cricket Victoria may have reached a funding agreement, but aspiring elite cricketers still don’t know what that means for the 2020-21 revamped Youth Premier League.
South East
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Aspiring young Victorian cricketers are still waiting to find out what elite representative honours will be on offer next season despite a funding agreement being reached between Cricket Victoria and Cricket Australia.
Both sporting bodies have confirmed to the Leader that CV has accepted a 25 per cent funding cut from the sport’s national administrator as CA looks to slash costs due to forecast revenue losses from COVID-19.
CV has maintained throughout its own financial crisis that it would make a final decision on what underage pathway competitions would proceed in 2020-21 when it had a final funding decision from CA.
CV now says there is still work ongoing underneath the funding distributions from CA.
Victoria’s cricket administrator has already axed three levels of the statewide Youth Premier League – under-14 and 18 boys and under-17 girls – as well as two-thirds of its community cricket staff.
CV has committed to continuing the under-16 boys and under-15 girls YPL competitions and plans to introduce a new Premier Cricket underage league, but those programs may be “paused” next season depending on funding.
CV chief executive Andrew Ingleton told the Leader it was still weighing up what underage representative programs would proceed next season.
It has meant the Victorian Metropolitan Cricket Union and Victorian Country Cricket League – both of which will expand their association representative competitions to fill the void – are still waiting on answers.
There has been widespread outrage among the Victorian cricket community at the extent to which grassroots and junior cricket has suffered from CV’s financial crisis.
When CA announced its own redundancies last week it made a considered effort to protect the “long-term integrity” of the game by retaining grassroots commitments such as the My Cricket platform, Woolworths Cricket Blast programs, junior cricket initiatives and investment in community facilities.
However, the national under-15 boys and girls and under-17 boys carnivals were “paused” for the immediate future.
It’s unclear how much CV pushed back on CA’s request to cut funding but it doesn’t appear it was as strong as some of the other states and the players.
CA chairman Earl Eddings told reporters last week they were re-evaluating their forecasts regularly and as the coronavirus conditions improve they can reassess their models.
“There’s a lot of things we have to do which are costly and will impact on our revenue so we still need to reshape the cost base of Australian cricket to prepare ourselves for the future,” he said.
A CA spokeswoman said the discussions with the states and territories were continuing and they believed there was “enough flexibility built into the plan to make necessary changes”.
But she said until they were given the green light to return to playing cricket they could not make any further commitments.
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Mr Ingleton said the information CV was provided to inform significant staff redundancies in May had not changed, which in turn had not changed their own financial forecasts.
“Looking ahead, there are now emerging reasons for optimism and we remain hopeful of a productive summer of cricket with fans in stadiums,” he told Leader.
“We’ve put our organisational plans in place and we’re focused on working with the Victorian community on existing programs and new solutions to keep cricket moving.
“The underage representative programs and state pathways remain part of that work and we hope to be in a position to give the community more detail on those plans soon.”