Former director hits Cricket Australia for six over treatment of Tasmania

A long-term former Cricket Australia director has delivered a bouncer aimed straight at the sport’s governing body over its poor treatment of Tasmania.

Former Cricket Australia director Tony Harrison says Tasmania has been forgotten by those who make the scheduling decisions.

A LONG-TERM former Cricket Australia director has delivered a bouncer aimed straight at the sport’s governing body over its poor treatment of Tasmania.

Former director Tony Harrison says this season’s dud fixture demonstrates Tasmania is not receiving the recognition it deserves from CA.

Mr Harrison, who served 16 years as a CA director up until late last year and 22 on Cricket Tasmania’s board, including eight as chairman, said the state had been ignored after it was revealed Tasmania would not host any women’s internationals over the summer, despite a T20 World Cup being on, and only has one men’s game (March 20) that clashes with the opening round of the 2020 AFL season.

“The thing that concerns me is there doesn’t seem to be the recognition of what we’ve contributed to in Australian cricket in terms of players, umpires and officials etc,” Mr Harrison said.

“That seems forgotten by those that make the decision.

“You talk to Ricky Ponting and he says the reason he played cricket for Australia was because of David Boon, because he was able to see David Boon playing here and thought, ‘I could do that.’

“We want to find the next Ricky Ponting.”

During his chairmanship, Mr Harrison was a strong advocate for the expansion of women’s cricket, and he said CT was not blameless in missing out on next year’s women’s T20 World Cup fixtures.

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“I understand they (CT) didn’t even bid for one of the women’s T20 World Cup games that is particularly disappointing as we are trying to grow the women’s game here and getting very good growth actually,” he said.

He said the state could not get into a bidding war for content, like the ACT Government was doing, and did not expect the Tasmanian Government to fork out cash for games.

However, the state’s financial backing of AFL games was repeatedly brought up by CA officials when Mr Harrison pushed for a better slice of the international cricket pie.

“I sympathise with the Tasmanian Government in that sense and I don’t think we want to get to that situation where we are bidding for games financially, but the reality is they do it for football and CA knows that,” Mr Harrison said.

He said content are distributed to a set of evenly weighted criteria, including spreading the games Australia-wide, a criteria CA was failing in.

Mr Harrison said one area the Government and CT could have an impact on future scheduling was to reach an agreement with CA for guaranteed content.

“I tried for years and years to get a long term program agreement for Tasmania and (former CA chief executive) James Sutherland particularly resisted it,” he said.

“The reality is they have those other agreements with other states.

“That’s where the Government with CT can play a role to get some sort of long term agreement so international cricket is played in Tasmania every year hopefully at a particular time of the year and as I say guaranteed numbers and I’m talking about men’s and women’s cricket.”

He said he was concerned CA would treat Tasmania the same way as another major sporting code.

“Cricket has been very good but I don’t want to see it go the same way as the AFL.”