Heat on Cricket Australia boss as states question financial situation

Chief executive Kevin Roberts has defended his leadership of Cricket Australia

Beleaguered CEO Kevin Roberts has defended his leadership of Cricket Australia

Chief executive Kevin Roberts has defended his leadership of Cricket Australia in the wake of his opposite number in rugby league resigning and on the day rugby union’s leadership staggered into another crisis.

Roberts’s position is under pressure, with key states and other stakeholders questioning claims there is a financial crisis and rejecting the need for across-the-board cuts.

The chief executive stood down 200 staff on Thursday and signalled deep cuts to all aspects of the game, but admitted much of the action pre-empted a worst-case scenario.

States rejected initial requests from Roberts to take a 45 per cent cut in their annual grants and none have agreed to a new offer around 25 per cent. Cricket’s head office is obligated to pay the various bodies a set amount every year and they do not have to agree to the calls for cost cutting.

Roberts said the game would be down to $20m in cash reserves by September and things would be dire if the summer tours did not eventuate. Cricket received almost $100m from broadcasters in mid-March and another payment is due in September, but would not eventuate if the summer were significantly affected.

The Indian tour scheduled for the summer is understood to be worth $300m.

The embattled chief executive claimed he had the backing of his board.

“Yes, we’re together working through challenging times that no one has faced in society before, let alone in cricket,” Roberts said.

“None of us get things perfect every step of the way because we’re just as human as everyone else, but we’re doing it with real respect for the communities that we lead and serve and we’re navigating a way through this.”

He admitted there had been “challenging conversations along the way” with stakeholders in the game. Roberts indicated to senior players in a series of phone calls in recent weeks that they would be asked to share the pain too, a move that set off alarms for the Australian Cricketers Association after a hard-fought battle three years ago to preserve the revenue share pay model that goes up and down according to business fluctuation.

The states and the ACA have asked Roberts to open Cricket Australia’s books and suggested they would be willing to take cuts if the worst eventuated, but are cynical about the need to give up money now.

Coach Justin Langer, who has been reduced to a part-time role, is understood to be upset by the way he and other staff have been suddenly sidelined.

Roberts spoke with the media on Tuesday for the first time since the crisis hit cricket late last week.

“On one level cricket is fortunate in terms of the time of year when the coronavirus situation hit,” he said. “On another level, cricket is unfortunate in that it’s hit us in the lowest time of our four-year cash cycle.

“So in a pre-coronavirus world, we were already projecting that our cash and investments would reduce to about $40 million, at the start of September this year. And that they would bounce back very quickly by the start of the Indian Test series to about a $100 million, which is approximately the level of cash and investments that we had at the end of March, just gone.

“So, the unfortunate reality of that is that we are estimating that we’ve taken a $20m impact thus far and we have to anticipate given the unknown nature and fast-moving nature of this situation that there’ll be more risks.

“If you contemplate the prospect of the international season in particular being affected, we have an issue of hundreds of millions of dollars on our hands. So, it’s very important that we try and plan proactively for that. We do everything possible to stage the season and to navigate our way through this as we go. We certainly hope the situation doesn’t go that deep and we’ll be doing everything we can to prevent it. If it goes there and we haven’t taken pre-emptive action beforehand then we have nothing to fight it with.”

He denied that sacking staff and demanding costs be slashed was unnecessary.

“We’re dealing with a situation that’s hitting us unfortunately at the low point of our cash cycle over four years,” he said.

“Albeit the timing is a little bit different in our season relative to the football codes, we’ve seen across the two major football codes they’ve done four things. One is to secure debt facilities, one is reduce their own costs as leagues, the next is to reduce their funding of clubs and the next is to negotiate a sensible resetting of player payments for the season.”