‘I share an impatience’: The cricket culture wars Nick Hockley couldn’t win

In Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, his memoir of Paul Keating’s federal government, former speechwriter Don Watson split the Prime Minister’s office into two groups.

There were “bleeding hearts” preoccupied by issues such as an Australian republic and Aboriginal reconciliation, and “pointy heads” who chose largely to follow the money.

Nick Hockley’s decision to quit as Cricket Australia chief executive at the end of this summer may be seen as a win by some of the game’s more pointy-headed elements. But Hockley will also leave plenty of goodwill behind him for navigating the most treacherous waters for Australian cricket since the same mid-1980s period in which Keating made his name.

Nick Hockley, backed by Foxtel branding, at the SCG.Credit: Brook Mitchell

Hockley’s on-field counterpart was Tim Paine, thrust into the Australian Test captaincy amid the Newlands scandal. He did a creditable job before being compelled to resign ignominiously in 2021. It says much about Hockley that, despite being the man who pushed Paine to the exit, the pair have remained close.

“I’ve got a lot of time for Nick,” Paine told this masthead. “The big thing I went through was quite a difficult situation to work through, but he did it with class and hence we’ve still got a good relationship. That speaks volumes for how he handled sticky situations. He always thought about other people and tried to look at it through a number of different lenses.

“That style of leadership is really underrated. A lot of people see leadership as being really gung-ho, get out there, get it done, make the tough decisions and it doesn’t matter who gets in your way. But I thought Nick had a really nice mix. He wasn’t chasing credit or acknowledgement for anything, he just went about his work.“

Earlier this year, many of those close to Hockley expected he would carry on until 2026, following next year’s home Ashes series. But Hockley had also expressed frustration that in the cause of greater diversity in Australian cricket, to better reflect the nation’s evolving population, he had done virtually all he could. “I share an impatience on this front,” he has said.

Hockley also grew weary of constantly debating CA’s state association owners, most recently when Victoria and NSW threatened to boycott a new women’s T20 competition. It is now up to an evolving board chaired by the former New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, to decide how much more they wish to make progress.

Having lost his biggest advocate on the CA board when the Melbourne and Olympic Parks chief John Harnden stepped down in May, Hockley began to shorten his horizons.

Harnden’s replacement, the accounting firm chief James Orchard, had been the South Australian Cricket Association vice president, and is steeped in club cricket. He is also much more socially conservative. These moves left Hockley without his former mentor while also shifting the CA board closer to the middle of the road in the eyes of the states.

More than likely, Hockley’s successor will be more pointy headed in nature. Concentration on the money will be paramount. So far as diversity or other social issues are concerned, a deep and existing relevance to cricket will be the test.

Climate change? Yes, because of its potential impact on cricket. Indigenous inclusion? Yes, because of the connection between Aboriginal Australia and the 1868 First XI in particular. South Asian inclusion? Yes, because it is a population that loves the game. But dictating how Australia Day should be observed? Not so much.

Top of the list of CEO candidates is former NRL chief executive and now players’ boss Todd Greenberg, who is much more obviously close to Baird through their NSW links. But Greenberg, when contacted by this masthead, was equivocal at best about taking on Hockley’s job. Hockley and Baird both declined to add to their media release about the CEO’s resignation on Tuesday.

‘Will he last nine months?’

Hockley accepted the offer to become chief executive of CA at a clandestine lunch with then-chair Earl Eddings and a fellow director in Sydney’s CBD in June 2020. That secrecy was part of a CA board plot to replace Hockley’s predecessor Kevin Roberts, due to the game’s state of paralysis in the winter of COVID-19.

Eddings and other directors wanted a CEO to carry out instructions without too much autonomy or profile. Hockley, raised in Birmingham and a major events specialist, fitted the bill.

Premier Daniel Andrews, with Cricket Australia chief executive Kevin Roberts, speaking to reporters in 2018. Credit: Eddie Jim

Back then, few of cricket’s great and good gave him much chance of doing the job for any longer than Roberts’ one-and-a-half years of misadventure: “Will he last nine months?” one asked.

But in successfully staging an Indian Test tour, Hockley proved himself capable of keeping the show on the road at the most difficult of times. Even when that extended to a terse meeting with Indian team management at the boundary’s edge during the SCG Test when there was genuine doubt about the visitors agreeing to fly to Brisbane for the final game of the series due to Queensland’s stricter biosecurity.

Just as well they did. India’s victory at the Gabba made for the most memorable finish to a Test in Australia for a decade. That moment alone was arguably enough to make Hockley’s role permanent a few months later.

‘The most incompetent administration I’ve ever worked with’

Hockley was pitched into an unseemly battle with Seven West Media as the broadcaster tried to wring a discount from its 2018 rights deal while CA delivered all the international and Big Bash League games it was contracted to provide.

Seven’s main protagonists were chief executive James Warburton, senior executive Bruce McWilliam, and head of sport Lewis Martin. It was Warburton who, in his frustration at CA’s unwillingness to bend, termed it the “most incompetent administration I’ve ever worked with”.

James Warburton.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

But Hockley held firm, ultimately vindicated by an independent assessment that Seven were contractually due only a peppercorn payment for lost content. The network’s many claims about “quality” were thrown out, in line with head of broadcast Stephanie Beltrame’s pronouncement to Martin, revealed in court documents: “It is a worldwide pandemic for God’s sake, Lewis.”

Then again, the macro effect of this dispute was to be seen in how, Seven’s portion of their rights deal with CA was renewed at a $15 million-a-season discount despite gaining digital rights alongside Foxtel. The total package of around $1.5 billion over seven years handed cricket only a minimal increase after far bigger leaps in value in 2013 and 2018.

Those terms, unveiled by Hockley at the SCG in January 2023, caused many a grumble among the “pointy heads” among state associations and also within the players’ cohort. Yet, it was also a less cut-throat agreement, devised to foster better relationships with Seven and Foxtel after the warfare of 2020-21. News Corp’s flag this week that it would put Foxtel up for sale added further merit to the deal and its timing.

‘The nicest person I’ve ever met out of Birmingham’

Australia, led by Pat Cummins, throttled England in the 2021-22 Ashes series, and followed up with a victorious first Test tour of Pakistan since way back in 1998.

But the indelible sagas of that summer came at the bookends. First, Paine’s resignation as captain after revelations in News Corp that he had sent an unsolicited, explicit image to a Cricket Tasmania employee, then Justin Langer’s exit as coach when players and staff bucked against the former Test opener’s volatility.

In both cases, Hockley was the target of much opprobrium. Paine has related how he was encouraged to quit by a corporate spin doctor while Hockley took a passive back seat to the conversation.

Justin Langer and Tim Paine.Credit: AAP

And the decision to offer Langer only a six-month contract extension, terms that the coach refused having thought himself worthy of as much as a decade in the job, was also attributed to Hockley by the CA board.

But the messy circumstances gave way to a couple of realities. Cummins has proven himself an outstanding leader, and Langer’s successor Andrew McDonald has overseen a happier and more consistent run of performances.

Paine was grateful for how Hockley maintained contact after their tough conversation, crediting him and Langer with helping the former captain to avoid becoming bitter or estranged from the game.

“He kept in contact through text and phone calls, then he came down to Tassie a couple of times and we just had lunch or grabbed a coffee. That’s something I’ll remember,” Paine said.

“Obviously I brought it on myself, but it was a pretty difficult, humiliating time in my life and there were a handful of people from CA who reached out, tried to help me as best as they possibly could, and Nick was certainly one of those.

“The fact that some people like Nick and [Justin Langer] and a few others kept that relationship going from their end has certainly helped me move forward past it and try to create a bit more of a future for myself in cricket. He’s the nicest person I’ve ever met out of Birmingham, that’s for sure!”

That January 26 interview

One on one, in briefings and social situations, Hockley has always provided decent company. He has an enormous work ethic, strong knowledge of the business of cricket and genuine affection for the game. He counts attending the epic 1999 World Cup semi-final between Australia and South Africa at Edgbaston as a cherished memory.

But in front of a microphone or even a large audience, Hockley has seldom been able to get comfortable enough to inspire total confidence. An attempt to explain the saga around David Warner’s failed bid to end his captaincy ban, in December 2022, stood out.

This has meant that in both public addresses and more private audiences with CA’s sceptical state association owners, Hockley has battled to win over the kinds of rooms a chief executive must carry more often than not. Other members of Hockley’s executive team, notably the recently promoted James Allsopp, have shown more polish in those environments.

But knowledge of Hockley’s public communication flaw did not prevent him being handed an interview with 2GB Radio’s famously feisty Ben Fordham in January, ahead of the Gabba Test against West Indies over the Australia Day long weekend.

In parallel with efforts to grow cricket’s south Asian engagement, Hockley has also worked closely with CA’s Indigenous advisory group, chaired by Justin Mohamed, to improve a poor record with Australia’s Aboriginal population.

But plans over several years not to mention “Australia Day” during matches held on January 26 fell afoul of Fordham and many of the “pointy heads” around Australian cricket when a men’s Test match was scheduled for that day.

Hockley, knowing his own challenges with public communication, was unlikely ever to have agreed to the Fordham spot alone. Baird, though, felt strongly that such tasks were the CEO’s responsibility.

Subsequent to the interview and the wincing it induced, Hockley and Baird agreed to a revision: “Australia Day” would be mentioned to the Gabba crowd on January 26, albeit in a sensitive manner.

Hockley’s end game

In the hours after Hockley’s departure was revealed by this masthead, he shared lunch in Melbourne with a selection of 57 “multicultural ambassadors” unveiled in May. Their number includes the likes of Usman Khawaja, former senator Lisa Singh, Fawad Ahmed and Peter Varghese.

The scheme was very Hockley: Inclusive, broad-minded and aimed at generating conversations with the vast south Asian diaspora that has an instinctive love for cricket but is yet to be reflected in playing, coaching or leadership ranks.

Usman Khawaja launched Cricket Australia’s Multicultural Action Plan.Credit: Getty Images

But it was also a reminder of how much more there is to do. An “ambassador” is not a player, a senior member of staff or a CA board director. To the cynical, they look like window dressing in the absence of greater transformation within the governing body.

And to the “pointy heads” in cricket, far more concerned with raising revenue and retaining the game’s traditional (white) Australian audience, the scheme is considered, perhaps unkindly, as little more than a sideshow.

The reality, of course, is somewhere in between. Hockley and his detractors all want the same thing, which is to have as many Australians playing, watching and paying for cricket as possible. But the next CEO may have to take a cue from Keating’s successor John Howard. His 1996 election slogan? “For all of us.”

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