SCG: Test of cricket smarts as political yorkers fly in
If Cricket Australia’s board had met on Wednesday, Sydney would have almost certainly lost the third Test between Australia and India. Here’s what went on behind the scenes.
If Cricket Australia’s board had met on Wednesday, Sydney would have almost certainly lost the third Test.
But it was Tuesday, and there were only three new coronavirus infections in the northern beaches cluster that had roiled the city since mid-December.
Despite the low number of new cases, Cricket Australia chairman Earl Eddings was undecided. Sydney? Back to Melbourne? Brisbane? His view changed frequently — not by the day but by the hour.
(Even now, after the situation in Sydney deteriorated on Wednesday, Cricket Australia is privately warning the decision may not be as locked in as it seems.)
NSW officials were well aware of Eddings’ prevarication.
Since the emergence of the northern beaches outbreak in Avalon, Jobs, Investment and Tourism Minister Stuart Ayres and key figures including Venues NSW chairman Tony Shepherd were working hard to convince Cricket Australia that everything was in hand.
As the hours counted down to the crucial Tuesday board meeting, Ayres called Gladys Berejiklian. It was time for the NSW Premier to give personal assurances to Eddings in a bid to ensure the New Year’s Test, a decades-long tradition, went ahead. There were various concerns occupying Eddings’ mind, as well as those of his acting chief executive Nick Hockley and the Cricket Australia board — depending on who was asked.
In the minds of NSW officials involved in discussions, Cricket Australia’s board had too much of a Melbourne-centric view. A COVID-19 outbreak in Victoria had turned into a full-blown crisis and shuttered the state for weeks. They were nervous Sydney could become the same. Then there was Berejiklian’s announcement about New Year’s Eve. Case numbers were down, but stricter restrictions — particularly for large gatherings — were put in place.
Still, Ayres and Shepherd and other senior NSW figures pushed hard to keep Eddings, a Victorian, and Hockley, who had navigated the game through the difficulties of the pandemic, engaged. Cricket Australia had been under intense pressure to announce its decision about the third Test even before the second began.
That pressure was no match for the political firepower NSW brought to the negotiating table. After all, in no other state do sports and politics mix so freely.
Those at the centre of Sydney’s sporting community — from political animals such as Shepherd to Destinations NSW chairman John Warn, Venues NSW director Alan Jones and Cricket NSW director Mike Baird — are masterful at piling on the pressure and charm to get their way.
(Not every intervention was viewed favourably. Shortly after Tuesday’s announcement that the Test would not be moving, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Baird, a former NSW premier, had been “instrumental” in making sure the match stayed in place. That was ridiculed by other parties in the negotiations.)
Having sought –—and received — assurances from Berejiklian and Ayres, Eddings and Hockley convinced the rest of the Cricket Australia board the match should not be moved.
In Ayres’s back pocket was the support NSW had shown Cricket Australia when Queensland, at the last minute, rejected quarantine arrangements for the Indian touring party and returning Australian players in late October, just weeks before three one-day internationals.
After Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles said the Indian team could “quite likely” bring coronavirus to the state, NSW took 72 hours to approve quarantining in Sydney. That act of goodwill, without which none of those matches could have gone ahead, averted a significant financial loss for Cricket Australia and weighed on Eddings and Hockley.
According to NSW officials involved in the discussion, who spoke to The Australian on condition of anonymity, Queensland’s Health Department continued to be less than helpful.
One of the sticking points in allowing the Sydney Test to go ahead was how Indian and Australian cricketers would be able to quarantine in Brisbane for the final match.
As Cricket Australia sought details, NSW officials had another thought: play the last Test in Sydney as well. Hard to do, but not impossible.
Unsurprisingly, the Queensland government saw how the discussions unfolded differently. They had put John Lee, a former NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet chief currently acting as director-general of Queensland’s Department of Tourism, in charge of discussions.
Earlier in the year, Lee had helped successfully negotiate the AFL’s move to Queensland as Melbourne’s lockdown rolled on. He communicated Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young’s position to Cricket Australia on Christmas Eve, Queensland officials said. The teams would be quarantined at Brisbane’s Stamford Hotel, and be allowed to leave to train and play.
“NSW is apoplectic that it was ever considered they would lose the Sydney Test … all of this talk about something not happening at the Gabba is coming from one place, and is all a distraction from the problems they are having,” said one senior Queensland official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “This is only an issue because they’ve got problems.”
Cricket Australia wouldn’t want to relinquish a Gabba Test, the official said, “because they want to win”. That famed Brisbane pitch is considered tougher from an Indian perspective.
(A Queensland Health spokeswoman said: “We have been open with Cricket Australia on what the requirements would be.”)
Still, NSW had something else up its sleeve. Luck.
In one of their greatest Test wins, India easily overcame Australia at the MCG early on Tuesday afternoon. As the match went on, Cricket Australia’s board was meeting. The decision to keep the third Test in Sydney was relayed to the Indians. In the glow of success, they readily accepted.
Ayres told The Australian on Wednesday that the NSW push to keep the Test was “a vindication of our strategy in managing COVID-19 and striking the right balance between health and the economy”. “This is a great way to start 2021, and what looked like was going to be a devastating loss for Sydney and NSW has turned into a great success,” Ayres said.
Under the NSW plan, the SCG will be half full — a crowd of 24,000 — for the third Test.
With sophisticated controls and a limit on corporate boxes, the venue will screen out ticket holders who come from the city’s suburbs experiencing a rapid escalation of coronavirus cases. The stands will be sealed off from one another, and movement severely restricted.
Still, that’s not good enough for some epidemiologists. Raina MacIntyre, a researcher at the Kirby Institute who is not generally in favour of lockdowns, says the Test should happen without a crowd. Commonwealth Chief Health Officer, Paul Kelly, a cricket tragic, said he would not take elderly family members to the match.
“Nine days is very long in COVID time,” he added.
With 18 new cases reported on Wednesday — as far afield as the Blue Mountains and Wollongong — Cricket Australia directors would not have agreed to keep the Test in Sydney had the decision been made 24 hours later.
Already, some broadcasters are planning to call the match offsite. But, by the skin of its teeth, NSW has managed to hang on to the third Test.
That is, if the weather holds.
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