After letting the days go by for months, CA gets caught behind

Cricket’s latest battle with the players and states is about trust and transparency.

The most confusing part about the latest front in the conflict between Cricket Australia and those who travel with her is that it is not about players’ pay.

Most are angry and alarmed but nobody is being asked to take less in the short term, nobody is being stood down or laid off.

Even better, if things turn out to be not as bleak as forecast then the upside will be directed back towards the players. Of course, if things turn sour they will get less but they accept that.

The players are not debating that mechanism, the conflict is to a degree about accounting, but mostly an outcry from a group who, like the staff, the states and the guy from Talking Heads are asking, “how did I get here?”

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This is about trust and transparency. People are confused and head office doesn’t seem able to offer any clarity. Relationships that had been re-established in the wake of the MOU to the point the chief executive could call the players and confide in them early in this palaver have returned to their default setting.

In early March everything seemed fine. Even when COVID-19 altered reality and the New Zealand games were cancelled, Australian cricket was in a good position and its chiefs acknowledged such.

Then rumblings about stock losses, financial headwinds, unexpected costs and reluctant debtors swept the states. The game is apparently on the brink of financial ruin. The mansion on the hill may as well be made of cardboard if what we are told is true. The future a shotgun shack.

Like the singer in the baggy suit, the states, players and staff began to question this reality. This was not their beautiful house, nor their beautiful wife. Was chief executive Kevin Roberts right or was he wrong? Where does that highway go to?

Before anybody could answer, 200 staff at head office were stood down on 20 per cent pay and now wait in limbo to find out how many will be laid off.

Some may identify with the anxiety of waiting the best part of two months to see if you will have a job or not and will understand the significance of that situation. It’s worth contemplating if you haven’t. A lot of good people will be lost, starting with the coaching staff for the national teams.

While the funereal think-music plays on that scenario the states battle with a similarly grim message from head office.

They fought off demands of greater cutbacks and some continue to fight, refusing to accept things are as bleak as they are told. None are ignorant enough to believe the effects of the pandemic will not have some effects on the game, but the level of impact is fiercely debated. With every passing week the consequences seem to diminish and head office’s alarmism appears to have been unwarranted.

Things could get cataclysmic if the pandemic kicks off again and the summer is suspended, but it is accepted that Australian cricket will be run by volunteers from a tent if that is the case. No amount of cost-cutting will save the game from that sort of blow.

The impact of this COVID-19-financial crisis has come in a series of waves and it’s left people wondering how you can go from a sniffle to life support in such a short space of time.

The states and players asked for more information and some months later find themselves still craving more.

Information was handed over late last Wednesday. The lack of detail and clarity in the 940-odd word document with accompanying graphs has enraged the players’ association as much as the same upset the states.

It is inconceivable how it could take that long to come up with this. The lawyers who barb-wired the MOU at least went out of their way to provide 11 pages of terms and definitions.

The “Calculation of Australian Cricket Revenue” occupies seven pages of clauses and sub-clauses. Every item is detailed.

The devil here is in the lack of detail and trust.

Same as it ever was.