Cricket Australia boss James Sutherland had a solid innings

Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland leaves the sport on firmer footing despite troubles.

Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland yesterday.

James Sutherland was ashen faced. It was a Sunday morning and Australia had woken to news that its cricket team had cheated. The Cricket Australia boss had woken earlier than most — it was about 3.30am when he received his first briefing — and slept little since. What’s worse, he knew he didn’t have answers to all the ­questions about to rain down on his ­administration.

Dressed in a suit and tie, he stood on the grass outside Cricket Australia’s Jolimont headquarters in the full glare of a breaking scandal, ringed by cameras, microphones and reporters, while bemused football supporters filed past on an early autumn morning on their way to the MCG. The leaves had not yet turned but Australian cricket had, in ways none of us entirely understood.

It was a humbling experience for Sutherland, a more than handy club bowler and chartered ­accountant who, on the day Test captain Steve Smith, vice-captain David Warner and opening batsman Cameron Bancroft conspired to manipulate the condition of the ball with a scrap of contraband sandpaper, had been running the game for 17 years.

Just as some of Sutherland’s board members were stunned when his name was proffered in 2001 as the preferred candidate to replace chief executive Malcolm Speed, Sutherland was blindsided by what had taken place in South Africa. He had sought an explanation from a team official in Cape Town earlier that morning, but by the time the cameras were rolling he still didn’t have the information he needed. He couldn’t say exactly what had happened. He couldn’t fairly apportion blame. What he did say would satisfy no one.

Wally Edwards, one of six people to chair the Cricket Australia board during Sutherland’s extraordinary tenure as chief executive, says Sutherland never sought a public profile and was never ­entirely comfortable with the front-of-house duties that come with the job. His best work, Edwards says, was done in the backrooms of the game, where, during his time as chief executive, a radical transforma­tion has occurred. When he steps down in a year as CEO, his largely unappreciated legacy will be substantial.

“He was appointed CEO when I was on the board,’’ Edwards tells The Australian. “I was a bit surprised when he got appointed. I can remember that. Typically in cricket you have to do your time and generally everyone has been pretty mature when they have been given a job like that. But James came in as a young guy and he has done a fantastic job. He has taken cricket to a new level, not only administration but everything about it.

“He was never an attention-seeker but he was an extremely good administrator. He set the ­vision, he established the infrastructure within Cricket Australia to drive cricket to where we have got it today, which is an amazingly different place than when he took over.

“Not many people realise the amount of work he did and the way he changed cricket. During my time as chairman there were a lot of significant governance changes, more than there had ever been in the history of the organisation. I carried a lot of the negotiations with states but James was really the powerhouse in the background for all of that. He was the one who got it to a point where we could make change.’’

As a consequence of those ­reforms, the next chief executive of Cricket Australia will have a board that, instead of being shackled by the parochial interests of state associations, is free to make decisions in the best interests of the game. Where 14 directors were previously appointed by the states according to an archaic gerrymander that gave Victoria and NSW a greater say than the others, the states now nominate only six ­directors, with a further three ­appointed by the board.

As a financial manager who previously worked for Ernst & Young, Sutherland can tell you the numbers that count.

When he took over Cricket Australia in 2001, its total revenue was about $50 million a year. That figure is now about $500m a year, thanks to the $1.2 billion broadcast rights agreement that Sutherland’s administration struck within weeks of the ball-tampering scandal. The rights beyond this summer are owned by the Seven Network and Foxtel. For the first time since World Series Cricket, the game has severed ties with the Nine Network and is preparing for a bold new broadcast era.

According to Cricket Australia records, 436,000 people played cricket in some form in the 2000-01 financial year. Total participation in cricket now stands at 1,429,523 — about one in every 20 Australians. The story within this growth is the emergence of the women’s game. A mere 40,000 women and girls played when Sutherland started the job. The most recent figure is 436,000, which represents 27 per cent of all people playing cricket.

The important number for ­Sutherland is 135,223. This is the number of primary school-aged girls and boys who play the game. Nearly 36,000 of them are ­enrolled in Milo Cricket and 20,567 play T20 Blast. Neither ­program existed in 2001. A further 79,000 play junior club cricket.

“The facts of the matter are if kids today, the primary school kids today, boys and girls, are not getting bats and balls in their hands, not seeing and understanding the opportunity that is there from playing cricket, then the game doesn’t have a future,’’ ­Sutherland says.

“That has been the under­lying driver for me in this role. All the way through it is about the kids and it is about making sure the game has a sustainable future.’’

The big changes in national and international cricket are there for everyone with an interest in the game to see: the championing of day-night Tests; the introduction and growth of the Big Bash Twenty20 competitions for men and women; and a new collective bargaining agreement that, not before time, establishes a wage structure that enables our best women players to train and compete as full-time professionals.

Sutherland lost his protracted, bare-knuckle fight with the Australian Cricketers Association over a set share of the revenue that the elite men’s players have long demanded and received. Cricket Australia wanted to abolish this model and give itself flexibility to address more pressing needs in the game. The players and their ­association campaigned aggressively, and ultimately successfully, to keep what they considered theirs. The tipping point came when the players voted to boycott a Test series in Bangladesh, the world’s most impoverished cricketing nation. Suther­land knew what this would mean to Bangladesh and Australia’s standing in international cricket. Cricket Australia caved in within a matter of days.

Given the final score in the pay dispute, Cricket Australia and ­Sutherland were castigated for how they handled negotiations. Yet Sutherland’s motives, if not his bargaining methods, were sound. During his tenure our Test cricketers have become Australia’s highest-paid sporting team and among the best-paid cricketers in the world. In recent years, however, the financial priorities of Cricket Australia have changed. What’s needed now is more money in women’s cricket and more money in suburban and country cricket where, in many ­instances, clubrooms are run down, equipment is derelict and pitches are substandard. It is telling that when incumbent Cricket Australia chairman David Peever lists Sutherland’s achievements, the Ashes series and world cups won during his time as chief executive are barely a footnote.

“James has done an incredible job and has always carried himself with integrity, humility and dignity, apart from knowing the game of cricket inside and out,’’ Peever says.

“James has been instrumental in driving crucial change around the game to make it even stronger for future generations. During his period of leadership, James has ­retained a strong passion for junior cricket. To that end, cricket has ­experienced a 228 per cent ­increase in participation including a near 10-fold increase in female participation since 2001. Aggregate attendances have increased by 137 per cent, while revenue has also grown nearly 10-fold, being around $50m when James commenced in the position, to around $500m per year today.”

Sutherland began working for Cricket Australia in 1998. He came to Jolimont as a commercial general manager, having previously worked for the AFL club Carlton. Back then, Australia were the best team in world cricket and Sutherland a retired medium-paced ­bowler who had managed four Sheffield Shield matches for Victoria. When Sutherland was appointed chief executive three years later, he was younger than Test captain Steve Waugh.

At a glance, the timing of ­Sutherland’s announcement is curious. In the past two months, Australia has lost its captain and vice-captain as well as its coach Darren Lehmann. There has been a mini-exodus from the Sutherland ­administration, with integrity chief Iain Roy accepting a redundancy package and senior spokesmen Andrew Holden and Mark O’Neill leaving the organisation.

Peever’s board has also undergone change, with former Wesfarmers chairman Bob Every quitting as a director with no public explanation. In the meantime, the dust has yet to settle on the ball-tampering scandal, with separate ­reviews under way into the culture of the team and the governance and culture of Cricket Australia. Sutherland says the scandal had no bearing on his decision. He says the question of when to leave has been playing on his mind — and recurring in his conversations with Peever — for two years. With the pay deal and future broadcast arrangements in place, now felt as good a time as any.

“We have laid key foundation stones which have included a new strategy for Australian cricket, a new memorandum of understanding with the Australian Cricketers Association that provides certainty for our male and female cricketers, and, just recently, a new domestic broadcast rights deals that will see broader TV coverage and significant increases in revenue flowing into the game,’’ ­Sutherland says.

“With these foundations in place, I feel that it is a good time to hand over the reins to a new CEO. My successor will have a strong and stable platform from which to lead our national strategy and to deliver on our bold aspirations to grow cricket as Australia’s favourite sport and a sport for all ­Australians.”

It also leaves Sutherland, 52, at an appropriate age to take on another big job in Australian or international sport.