Game on: How Mike Baird, Australia’s new cricket boss, is stepping up to the crease

This story is part of the July 8 Edition of Good Weekend.See all 16 stories.

Mike Baird is talking about monsters. The kind that are huge, green and terrifying, and which curl up and then roar. “Look at that one!” he says, swiping to a photo on his phone, as he tilts the screen towards me. He’s elated. “I love that one. It’s double overhead. For me, that’s a monster, for others that’s fun!” Baird shakes his head, mesmerised as he flicks back and forth between the images on his screen.

The photos are from a week-long surfing holiday that Baird, a businessman and former NSW premier, took last July with three of his closest mates. The men, all in their mid-50s, travelled to the remote Telo Islands, which sit on the equator off the west coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra. It took them two days to get there: first by jet plane, then by light aircraft – “a bug catcher” with wings – before stepping into an even more humble boat for the final leg to their destination.

The adventurous holiday had long been on Baird’s bucket list. Once there, he and his mates surfed for seven hours a day, attempting to catch those towering, scary waves – the ones that he calls “monsters”. Baird has surfed since his teenage years and finds it calming. “It doesn’t matter what I’ve been doing in life, if I have the opportunity to surf, it really feels like the pressure, stress and challenges slowly drift away in the ocean,” he says.

The Telo Islands were a much-needed escape for Baird. After stepping out of the public eye, the former star politician has had a tough number of years. There’s been a close bereavement and serious family illnesses. He’s seen a psychologist to deal with past trauma, and made decisions about his career that some might view as limiting. “People look at my career, and it’s not linear. It’s just kind of bemusing,” he admits.

Baird, who Scott Morrison courted but failed to ­convince to run for federal politics at the last election, is telling me about his holiday as we sit in the Alan Roper Pavilion at Manly Oval in Sydney’s north, a five-minute walk away from the suburb’s famous beach. Baird has chosen to meet here to talk about Cricket Australia, of which he became chair in February. He’s watched many cricket matches and made numerous end-of-season club presentations at this oval, where he’s a patron. It’s also where he claims to have taken a “Test wicket”.

Baird is the fifth chair in as many years of the Melbourne-headquartered Cricket Australia. It’s not his first sports board. He was previously a director of Surfing Australia and Cricket NSW. However, the job he has taken on at Cricket Australia is daunting – more so than those monster waves on Telo.

Cricket is at a critical juncture in its history. At a global level, the sport is being reshaped by Indian and American millionaires and billionaires, who are
increasingly asserting their ­influence over how the game is run. They are pouring huge sums into T20 cricket, the fast-paced, entertaining short-form of the game that is limited to 20 overs a side, and are bankrolling new cricket teams and leagues across the globe.

So far this year, new leagues have been added in South Africa and the United Arab Emirates, and another will launch in the United States this month. The budgets of these billionaires and millionaires are notably bigger than those of national cricket boards, such as Cricket Australia, and the fear is they will use their deep pockets to sign up the world’s best players, including emerging talent. Indeed, some have already flagged such plans.

Mike Baird surfing on Sydney’s northern beaches in 2015.Credit: Dallas Kilponen

A multi-year, multimillion-dollar contract to play for numerous international T20 leagues could set a young cricketer up for life. However, a condition if they sign up to play for such leagues may be that they never play Test cricket, the traditional five-day format of the sport. “Some are taking the view that in time a cricket player will have a choice of playing for their country, or playing for multi T20 leagues,” says Baird. “It’s undoubtedly ­putting more pressure on Test cricket. It’s challenging the orthodoxy.” If that happens, then it’s bad news for Australian cricket fans, who may rarely, if ever, see some of this nation’s own stars play on home soil.

The expansion of T20 leagues may be threatening the ­existence of Test cricket, but the game has been here before and survived. In the 1970s, media tycoon Kerry Packer created the breakaway World Series Cricket league, signing up a number of the world’s best players. It drastically changed the sport before a truce between Packer and the cricket establishment was struck. Perhaps that’s the result that Baird can hope for as these new big-money men shake up the game.

In Australia, cricket has also had its problems. The sport at its top levels has been racked with ­dysfunction and rancour. In the past five years there have been multiple chairmen and three CEOs at Cricket Australia; a bitter pay dispute between players and the executive; a cheating and a sexting scandal in the men’s national team, which claimed the scalps of captains Steve Smith and Tim Paine; an ethics review; the mangled exit of men’s team coach Justin Langer; and a fight with billionaire Kerry Stokes over the value of television rights.

It’s enough to make anyone think twice about taking on the role. However, Baird is used to knotty problems.

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Baird is looking out across the ­brilliant green of Manly Oval surrounded by its white picket fence. The 55-year-old is dressed in dark navy jeans and an untucked blue business shirt. He has bright blue eyes and mousy-brown hair that is cut short with a sharp quiff at the front, and wears the easy smile of someone very comfortable in their own skin. He is telling me about his claim to fame on this ground.

Baird is keen to demonstrate his cricketing credentials, even if they are a little dubious. It was here in a charity match about a decade ago that Baird bowled out Stuart MacGill, the retired Test cricketer. MacGill, a former spin bowler, was a known duffer with the bat. “I got Stuey MacGill out, and I’m claiming that as a Test wicket!” Baird says, laughing.

A young Mike (at right) with his mother Judy, sister Julia and brother Steve at Disneyland, c. 1980.Credit: @juliabaird/Instagram

A passionate fan of the sport, Baird has followed cricket from an early age and played it most of his life. Some of his earliest memories are of huddling around a radio listening to the cricket commentary with his mum, Judy, a psychologist and cricket fanatic. She instilled in Baird a love for the game. They would follow the gladiatorial deliveries of their hero fast bowlers Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, giants of the game in the 1970s and ’80s.

For some of those years Baird attended primary and middle school in Germany and the US, where his father, Bruce, worked as an Australian trade ambassador. In the US, the ­family lived in Rye, a commuter community an hour north of New York City. There, Baird ­attended a co-ed school, played baseball and visited Disneyland and Yankee Stadium with his ­family. (He has two younger siblings, Julia and Steve.)

When the family returned to Australia in Baird’s early high school years, he was unhappy to learn there were no girls at The King’s School he would ­attend, in the city’s west, known for its military uniform. By then Baird had been a student at numerous schools, and to fit in at King’s he quickly adopted a broad Australian ­accent after being teased about the way he tawwked, and took up playing cricket. Years later, when he entered politics, he resisted advice to get voice coaching.

During his late teenage years, Baird became a leader of a Christian fellowship group of about 400 youths in St Ives, in Sydney’s north. In the group was Rob Stokes, who would become a planning and an environment minister in Baird’s government. Stokes says neither he nor Baird back then gave any thought to political careers, but he believes leading the youth group helped hone Baird’s leadership talents for later in life. “If you can lead a bunch of kids as a peer with a sense of fun, but also with underlying seriousness, that’s an amazing skill.”

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It was through the youth group and church conventions that Baird met Kerryn, when he was 18. He was studying economics at the University of Sydney and driving a Mini Moke. They were both 22 when they married. “She’s my soulmate, I know that’s an obvious word, but she really is,” says Baird. “She’s been by my side at the darkest hours and at the moments of
triumph, and everything in between.”

The couple have been married for 33 years, during which time Baird has had eight wedding rings. He has lost expensive ones while surfing, and broken and bent cheap replacements, like the one he’s now wearing. It’s a $50 black band from the Eumundi markets on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. “We’re waiting to see how long this one lasts,” laughs Kerryn. “We don’t shop at Tiffany’s anymore.”

After finishing his university degree, Baird took a job with National Australia Bank and later went into investment banking, working for Deutsche Bank. At 27, he quit and went to study at Canada’s Regent College, a Christian theological graduate school, to become an Anglican minister. It was 1995, and Baird was initially asked to write an essay about his life. In his paper, Baird reflected on his father’s political career. After the family returned to Australia, Bruce worked in the ­private sector, before entering state politics, becoming transport minister, then minister for the Sydney Olympic bid, and also the NSW Liberal Party’s deputy leader. Later, Bruce moved into federal politics in the Howard government.

Mike greeting his father, Bruce, on NSW state election day in 2015.Credit: Andrew Meares

Baird wrote in his essay that he wanted to serve ­communities like his father, but as an Anglican minister. The lecturer scribbled the comment “or maybe in Australian politics” on the paper, which would be a light-bulb moment for Baird. “Mike had this experience of leaving the bank to go to Canada thinking he would become an ordained minister, and had quite an epiphany that actually, you can be someone who’s serving God in the world, in many areas, and maybe it’s in politics,” says his friend Simon Smart, who also studied at Regent College. Smart is now executive director at the Centre for Public Christianity.

By 1999, Baird was back in Australia and planning his entry into politics, but he didn’t get far. His bid for preselection for the state seat of Manly was unsuccessful. So he returned to banking with National Australia Bank and later HSBC, working overseas in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.

In 2006, Baird tried again for preselection in Manly with the support of then prime minister John Howard, and was successful. He was elected the
following year. In his maiden speech to parliament, he talked of how his faith would be his bedrock. “My faith will ground me, shape me and provide my motivation to serve until my time here is done.”

Baird held a number of state ministerial roles: industrial relations, infrastructure, the Western Sydney portfolio, and also treasurer. It wasn’t ­always an easy path. His first budget was an embarrassment. It was prepared by Treasury staff and was littered with errors. The state ­deficit of $337 million turned out to be a surplus of $680 million, drawing a scathing assessment from the then auditor-general. As treasurer, Baird pushed to reduce costs across government departments and services, hired more staff from the private sector in a bid to improve the public service, and argued for the partial sale of the state’s electricity network. He was widely considered tough and determined.

In 2014, he found himself unexpectedly elevated into the premiership after the bizarre downfall of Barry O’Farrell over his failure to declare a $3000 gift bottle of Grange. As premier, Baird took the plan to privatise part of the state’s electricity network to an election – and won. His predecessors had feared voters would reject such a policy, and that it would lead to electoral ruin. Baird also overreached in some of his decisions, such as fighting for alcohol-related lockout laws, council amalgamations and the failed battle to ban greyhound racing, which cost him political capital and saw his status as the country’s most popular politician wane. “He tends to do what he thinks is right, even if that has personal consequences,” explains Gladys Berejiklian, who succeeded Baird as NSW ­premier.

Simon Smart sometimes accompanied Baird as his plus-one to Liberal Party functions. The two men have been friends for 25 years and first met at Manly’s St Matthews Anglican church. “He’d introduce me as his friend who only voted Labor,” says Smart. “It wasn’t quite true, but I quite enjoyed it. I’d wear my red tie.“

Baird’s leadership style as premier was firm but ­gentle, says former politician Rob Stokes. “People wanted to do the right thing by Mike. He had that sort of character or personality that made people want to go out of their way to help him.” Stokes expects it will be the same at Cricket Australia, and warns the staff there to be careful of underestimating their new boss.

From left: Baird with his then treasurer – and successor – Gladys Berejiklian; with his then planning minister, Rob Stokes.

“Mike has the sort of breezy countenance that makes you think that he really is not terribly switched on. However, there’s a lot more design to the way he goes about things than might first appear.” He talks about how Baird
approached meetings, ­carrying a notebook to each one listing the two or three objectives he wanted to accomplish. “He had a clear sense of what he wanted to achieve and was very strategic about the use of his time.“

Baird also used his schedule in ways most ­voters didn’t see. He quietly raised millions for Bear Cottage, a cancer hospice for kids and adults, and read and responded to critical letters from constituents and abusive ­messages on social media.

In doing the latter, he broke a golden rule of politics, and it became a problem for Baird. “Rule number one is never ever pay any attention to what the haters say,” says Stokes. “Mike’s wonderful strength was also his weakness in that he actually cared. He felt things too deeply and personally. It really quite hurt him, some of the things that people were saying on Facebook. It wasn’t that he needed the love of people. But he genuinely was concerned or confused when people didn’t realise that he was just trying to help them. That’s not a great ­attribute for someone in politics to have. A lot of people in politics survive because they play it as a game.”

In January 2017, after only three years as premier, Baird resigned despite having confirmed publicly his intention to stay for a second term. His sudden departure stunned the Liberal Party, as powerbrokers had marked Baird’s card as a potential prime minister. Voters were shocked.

I found myself many years later sobbing at times. It took a real human toll.

Mike Baird

Baird explained that he was leaving politics for ­family reasons. His mother was very ill from a Parkinson’s-related disease, and his sister Julia, an ­author and broadcaster, was fighting a rare cancer. As well, the job and its 20-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week demands took a toll on his immediate family. A person outside his home had been arrested at 3am with a knife, he reveals. TV crews with their cameras were regularly waiting at his house by 5am, offering little privacy to Kerryn and their three children, Laura, Cate and Luke. His kids, now all in their 20s, were bullied in ­person and online because of some of his government’s policies.

In his resignation press conference, Baird said he had gone into politics to make a difference and had not intended to stay forever. He also said it was time for him to be with his family and that he was exhausted. “I’ve given my all. There is nothing left.”

Six weeks after his departure, Baird revealed he would join one of Australia’s largest financial institutions, National Australia Bank, as head of its corporate and institutional banking division. It was a big and demanding role, and some voters were angry. How could Baird say he was quitting politics to spend more time with family, only to step into another huge job? It didn’t
add up. For Berejiklian, it did. “Any other role would not compare to the level of scrutiny and pace that you get in being the leader of the largest state of Australia.”

Baird in 2014 with his wife, Kerryn, and their children (from left) Cate, Luke and Laura.Credit: Janie Barrett

Baird did spend more time with his family after politics. He cared for his mother, Judy, who died in 2021 after a drawn-out illness that had left her unable to talk, feed herself or get out of bed. The three Baird children were with their mother when she died. “The kids knew that Judy was going and decided they would take their sleeping bags and stay in the same room with her,” says Bruce. “In the middle of the night, Mike heard his mum having trouble breathing, he got up and then she breathed her last. Their relationship was very strong. She was always there for him.“

Baird has also been there for his sister Julia as she has battled cancer. She recalls waking up in the hospital after an operation. “He was there when I opened my eyes after my last surgery, telling me the good news. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to swim again, and I could swim.” He took her home, having bought groceries. “I crashed on the couch, and he just got into my kitchen and started cleaning out my fridge. I remember lying there just ­listening to it and thinking, ‘That’s a good brother.’ ”

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On a rainy morning, Baird and I meet at a cafe in Freshwater, a suburb on Sydney’s northern beaches. We’re discussing why he left public life. Aside from family reasons, there was another factor that led to his decision to quit. “When I would meet people, either in my electorate office or when they’d come into the premier’s office, I always had the ability to feel their pain or connect into issues,” he says. “But I’d gone numb. I had one meeting with a person, and it was such a terrible story and I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel I had empathy … I believed that if I was becoming numb at a personal level, I couldn’t do my job.“

Amid the focus on Baird’s policies, and the controversy they sometimes drew, the electorate had forgotten that as premier his biggest test had come eight months into his leadership, when he was confronted with the horror of the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney’s CBD. Baird found himself ­trying to hold the state together in the days and weeks after that late 2014 terrorist attack, which led to the loss of two lives, and threatened to incite anger and ­violence against Australian Muslims.

The deaths of Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson profoundly affected Baird, though he never discussed it publicly at his resignation. Family, friends and former colleagues say he was traumatised. Imre Salusinszky, who was Baird’s media adviser, recalls the day in 2015 when the Lindt Cafe reopened, and Baird, the NSW police commissioner and cafe staff were to be there for it. “He found the thought of going into the place where these horrors had occurred extremely confronting, and three or four of us had to really talk him through that.”

Baird’s mum, who had worked with police experiencing trauma, recognised her son needed help and was worried. Instead, Baird focused on his job running the state. “I found myself many years later sobbing at times,” he says. “It took a real human toll, as it did to so many. It was three years after leaving politics that I finally went to see a psychologist to talk about it. The loss of Tori and Katrina will always be with me.” Nonetheless, he acknowledges his own feelings were secondary. “The impact on me is nothing like what those families who lost loved ones went through, or the hostages, or those emer­gency responders and the crew that went in.”

Baird outside the Lindt Cafe in Sydney, scene of a terrorist attack in late 2014.Credit: Shu Yeung

Baird has been in England attending the men’s and women’s Ashes – the Test series held every two years between Australia and England. While there, he has also been at meetings of the International Cricket Council (ICC), the sport’s global governing body. On the ICC’s agenda has been the rapid expansion of T20 leagues and how they are upending the game and Test cricket. It’s also been on the mind of many of the players, ­including Steve Smith, the former Australian men’s captain. “Hopefully, Test cricket still stays alive and well,” he said recently.

The challenge for the ICC is how it maintains control of the cricketing calendar. T20 leagues are increasingly dictating the terms of when contests are played. More T20 leagues means less space in cricket’s crowded and punishing schedule that also includes Tests and 50-over one-day internationals. “Australia needs to have a very strong voice globally at the table of the ICC around this exact issue, ensuring that there is a strategic mindset across all formats, whether it’s Test cricket, 50-overs cricket, or T20 cricket,” says Todd Greenberg, the chief executive of the Australian Cricketers’ Association.

The Indian Premier League, which runs for two months of the year, is the most popular and lucrative cricket league in the world. The five-year media rights to that league were sold last year for $US6.2  billion. Its commercial success is the reason American and Indian billionaires, from Avram Glazer to Mukesh Ambani, have expanded into other leagues in South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the Caribbean and the US. They want to make more money out of the sport and believe the faster-paced T20 game appeals more to younger audiences and fans. The test of that theory will be when US Major League Cricket launches this month while the Ashes series is on.

“There are no roles or opportunities I’d want to rule out while I’m still relatively young.”

Mike Baird

The US is the world’s most competitive sports ­market but investors such as venture capitalist Sivaramakrishnan “Soma” Somasegar claim not to be intimidated. “America is the world’s number one media market, and cricket is the second most-watched sport in the world after soccer,” he says. “So bringing them together here in the US opens up a world of ­opportunities for the sport and for the players.” He and his friend, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, have invested in one of the six teams in the US league.

Baird’s priority when he started at Cricket Australia in February was to unify the game at home. The first step towards achieving that goal was to secure the pay deal ­between Cricket Australia’s executive and the sport’s players. In the past, such pay deals have been acrimonious, with both sides at war and airing their grievances through the media. None of that happened this time. Both sides were able to come to an agreement and there was a substantive increase in salaries for all cricketers, especially female players, across state, national and T20 teams.

For Baird, the pay deal was important for two ­reasons. First, it removed long-simmering tensions and distrust between both sides. Second, it made salaries more competitive against those being offered by global T20 franchises and ensured Australia remains a strong and competitive cricketing nation on the world stage. Now he’s exploring other options to help Cricket Australia grow and stay nimble. He is open to considering private equity investing in the game. Private equity has taken stakes in teams and leagues in many other sports, ­including soccer and rugby union, across the world.

Baird says he has brought together a team of the best minds in the country, including investment bank Morgan Stanley, to look at how the sport can improve. “Everything’s on the table,” he says. “If you don’t look at everything, you’re sticking your head in the sand, and you’re not seeing potential and significant opportunities for the game.”

He is also focused on growing revenues across the sport, looking at how Cricket Australia can expand its digital offering as well as increasing attendances, particularly among Australia’s growing South Asian immigrant communities. Last year, the Melbourne Cricket Ground was filled to capacity for a T20 Cricket World Cup game between India and Pakistan.

“We need lots more ­cultural diversity in our leadership and thinking that’s going to help to drive participation and growth in cricket among those multicultural communities,” says Baird. At the last census, there were more than 710,000 people in Australia who were born in India, and this number is forecast to increase to well over 1.2 million in the next decade.

Baird’s priority when he started at Cricket Australia was to unify the game at home.Credit: Nic Walker

Baird, who’s already been to international tournaments in South Africa and India this year, and now England, also plans to meet with a host of local clubs across the country to hear what their concerns are regarding community cricket. A focus for Baird in those meetings is to understand why there’s been a decline in the participation of teenage boys in the sport, while rates have soared among girls with the continuing ­success of the national’s women’s team and strong role models such as Ellyse Perry and captain Meg Lanning.

Baird was in London during the strained final day of the second Test, when there was a confrontation in the Lord’s Long Room between disparaging Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) members and Australian players following the controversial Jonny Bairstow dismissal (three MCC members were later suspended). “The spirit of the game embodies many things − including the desire to win within the rules − which I believe we saw Pat Cummins and the team deliver on at Lord’s,” says Baird. “The spirit of the game should also inform how we behave as spectators and fans, and I’m thankful for the MCC’s interventions to ensure that stays the case in the future.”

Baird is dividing his time between Cricket Australia, where some expect he will stay for five years, and working as CEO of aged care group HammondCare. He took the role at HammondCare in 2020 after departing NAB, where he was in contention to become the company’s next CEO but withdrew for family reasons, as he would have had to relocate to Melbourne.

Baird expects that after departing HammondCare he will have one more CEO role left in him. “It would want to be challenging and interesting, and it would have to be something I can finish my career on.” As for a return to political life, he says he can’t see it, but nor will he exclude it. “There are no roles or opportunities that I’d want to rule out while I’m still relatively young.” He doesn’t miss the vicissitudes of politics, where every day was like election day, and on social media everyone was writing history in minute-by-minute ­intervals.

However, he remains engaged in national political issues and will be encouraging people to vote yes in the upcoming referendum on an Indigenous voice to federal parliament, which has been backed by Cricket Australia. “The Constitution is an unfinished story, and we can’t talk about Australia without talking about our First Nations people, so that recognition to me is critically important.“

He also has a view on how state and federal Liberal parties can regain office. It’s not complicated. He says they simply need to listen more to what the electorate wants. “Local communities have got a pretty simple proposition. ‘Listen to us, respond to us, and be representative and fight for the issues that are important to us, and we’ll back you.’ Parties that embrace that way are the ones that have the biggest opportunity.“

It’s what he plans to do at Cricket Australia.

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