It’s time for a change at Cricket Australia

Nothing demonstrates Earl Eddings’s unsuitability for a second term Cricket Australia chair so clearly as his determination to seek it.

Earl Eddings is seeking a second term despite the opposition of two key states

Nothing demonstrates Earl Eddings’s unsuitability for a second term as chairman of Cricket Australia so clearly as his determination to seek it at this Thursday’s annual meeting.

For much of his first three-year term, to which he succeeded accidentally in October 2018, Eddings has chaired to the dissatisfaction of two of CA’s three largest members, NSW and Queensland.

Cricket has reverted to bad old parochial ways because, frankly, other states have recognised the potential advantages of the chair relying on them for their support. But it’s a bit like a batter insisting on batting on because one stump is still standing.

Ten years ago, the Carter-Crawford review, which preluded the advent of the independent board, said that the “major role” for the CA chairman was “to nurture collaborative relationships with the state organisations”. By that measure, Eddings has seemingly failed.

Eddings’ chairmanship, moreover, points more generally to some strange governance practices. For how has a role envisioned by Colin Carter and David Crawford as non-executive and supervisory ended up cloaked with extensive executive powers, relegating the role of chief executive to something more akin to a chief operating officer?

Perhaps this is fitting, in that Eddings hails from Victoria whose government manages by “creeping assumptions”. But this change has passed mostly unexamined.

As The Australian reported last week, secretive resolutions of the CA board some time back, which have only recently come to light, included a recommendation that all future CA chairs serve two terms in “recognition of the complexity of the role of chair of Cricket Australia”.

Seriously? Not even the US president is guaranteed consecutive terms. The proposition is not just bogus but self-glorifying. It relies on conjuring up the image of Eddings sorting out world cricket’s problems over a Crowny with old mate Sourav.

But even if cricket did work this way, it shouldn’t. Good governance needs identifiable principles and robust structures. Australia should be setting an example in that respect not participating in matey deals and bullshit gladhanding. It is institutions not individuals who count.

I would like at this point to say something in Eddings’s favour, to point to my view of the achievements of his chairmanship. I would like to, but I can’t. He, ahem, certainly likes his job. Thirteen years on the board testifies to something. It’s just that this might not be an unmitigated good.

Eddings arrived with a mandate to reform the system, conferred by 2018’s Longstaff Review. Yet, perhaps because he was also a representative of that system, he has seemed unable to take any initiative at all.

How is the CA board still so deficient in cricket expertise ahead of vacancies arising for men’s coach and captain? How does CA still lack a recognisable public spokesperson capable of explaining decisions or articulating strategy? What was the point of the Longstaff Review anyway?

CA half-heartedly embraced Longstaff’s recommendation to build a “more constructive working relationship” with the Australian Cricketers’ Association and of an Australian Cricket Council comprising state chairs, but steadily let these slide. The ACA is now looking on silently; the council has not met for almost a year.

“Subject to issues of confidentiality (commercial and otherwise),” recommended the review, “the Board of CA publish the minutes of its meetings (eg as is done by the Board for Control of Cricket in India).”

CA replied with the squib that it would “review mechanisms to provide greater transparency”, then didn’t even clear that low bar.

How did the CA board ratify a change to the chairmanship as fundamental as the one mentioned earlier without proclamation let alone consultation? How has it failed for the past three years to take the most basic steps towards succession planning?

These are questions at the heart of the chairman’s performance.

Here’s the thing. No matter where you stand or who you blame, CA’s current relationship with Cricket NSW and Queensland Cricket is unworkable and irrecoverable – and it’s not enough to say, oh well, four out of six states ain’t bad. There is no precedent for such division. It is a prescription for further stagnation.

The ICC, meanwhile, is just about moribund – for which we, a foundation member, need to shoulder our share of blame.

Our bilateral relations are in a sorry state. More of the same is simply a further abdication of ­responsibility.

So this concerns the job as well as its holder. Back in 2011, because good people not already very busy are hard to find, Carter and Crawford observed that the “traditional obligations” of the chairmanship, with its internal and external portfolios, were already too great.

They argued: “We suggest that the newly constituted board consider this issue and the attributes and the time commitment required of the chairman, recognising the paramount importance of being able to attract the best qualified person to fulfil the role.” They called for discussion of whether some tasks could “be reallocated to other board members”.

The board not only never got round to that discussion, it did the opposite, gradually doubling down on support for an all-encompassing “only I can fix it” chairman who never saw a role he felt unequal to.

It’s time to review the role, perchance to split it, between a unifying chair overseeing domestic affairs and a president, possibly a former cricketer of stature, to represent CA at the ICC.

The latter should be entrusted with the task of recommitting Australia to international cricket and rebuilding our reputation as a country to be relied on, rather than one that unapologetically suits itself at all events.

Neither of those tasks suit Eddings. Cricket has languished long enough.

Thirteen years is way long enough. It is time for a change.