Fireworks expected as support for Cricket Australia chair wavers

A divisive and ugly battle over Cricket Australia chairman Earl Eddings’ bid for another term is expected at Thursday’s AGM.

The states are divided over Earl Eddings’s bid for a second term as CA chair

Cricket Tasmania is understood to have thrown its weight behind Earl Eddings’ divisive bid for a second term as chair of Cricket Australia, but he nonetheless appears to have lost the full support of his board.

There could be some fireworks at CA’s annual general meeting on Thursday, where the states must endorse Eddings’s controversial move, which will see two of Australia’s largest cricket states at odds with head office.

Tasmania’s board met on Tuesday night as did Western Australia’s to discuss, among other things, the debate around renewing Eddings’s role.

Both the Queensland and NSW Cricket boards have withdrawn support of the cricket boss, who says he has not had time to groom a successor since rising to the job in 2018. If Western Australia follow the other two dissenting states, Eddings’s bid for a second term will fail.

Eddings took the job when David Peever quit after losing the support of NSW. He recently offered to identify a deputy and stand down at an undetermined time during his next term despite not having the support of Queensland and NSW.

The Australian revealed that the two states were so upset by the board’s unanimous support of this proposal that they pushed behind the scenes for a compromise deal that would see Eddings gone by May 31, 2022.

That offer was rejected and there is speculation it has caused some to reconsider their position of a few weeks earlier.

The Australian also revealed that the board had quietly changed two provisions in its governance policy towards the end of Peever’s term to recommend the chair serve at least two terms and that the policy change from discouraging more than nine years’ service as a director to accepting it in certain circumstances.

Eddings is entering his 14th year as a director, having come on to the board as representative of Victoria before the governance model was changed in 2011. Later he was forced to shift from the Victorian nominated seat to one of the independent seats after losing the support of that state.

There is enormous angst at NSW and Queensland over the way the process has played out and the workings of the board’s nominations committee in recent years.

Failure to groom a successor could be condemnation of the leadership or the quality of the candidates on the board, but there are some astute people among the 10 who guide the game from behind closed doors.

West Australian nominee Dr Lachlan Henderson is one director who is rumoured to be a potential replacement for Eddings, but his role as chief executive of Epworth HealthCare is demanding.

Henderson is understood to have indicated he cannot do both jobs at this stage. The chair, who is paid around $250,000 a year plus generous travel allowances, is expected to attend ICC meetings and major tournaments while the day-to-day business of cricket is time consuming even for a director.

There has been some suggestion of splitting the functions of the chair or even delegating to a deputy, but Eddings has not appointed one.

Mike Baird, former premier of NSW and former director at NSW Cricket, is another too busy with his day job as CEO of HammondCare to step up. Also, he has had limited exposure to the workings of the organisation after the board insisted he spent a long cooling-off period between stepping down from his state role.

Eddings was put on notice by NSW two years ago that they were concerned he was not grooming a successor and relations between him and the state seem to have broken down almost completely this year.

Eddings has portrayed Cricket NSW chair John Knox as a rogue director determined to run Australian cricket, forcing the NSW board to release a statement saying it unanimously endorsed concerns around a lack of succession planning.

“As a board we are gravely concerned with the Cricket Australia board nomination process and its implementation, particularly in this cycle,” the statement said.

Knox denies any ambitions to join the board, be chair or run the game.

Tasmania’s Paul Green, a COO of Enterprise Division at KPMG and John Harnden, CEO of Melbourne & Olympics Parks Trust, are two others mentioned in conversations about potential leadership candidates.

There has never been a woman in the role but there are three on the board: former cricketer Mel Jones, the highly experienced Dr Vanessa Guthrie and Michelle Tredenick.