Cricket Australia is in hot water at present, to all intents and purposes.
Its plans to privatise the Big Bash League (BBL) have hit a wall after three of its cricket associations said no to its proposal. Out of six associations, it needed five to say yes to carry the plans through, but that has not been the case.
Now there is more crisis coming its way. If a report in Code Sports is to be believed, as many as five senior cricketers are not happy with the central contracts they have been offered by Cricket Australia, and they haven’t signed them yet.
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Plus, after the privatisation plans have been rejected, there are reports that many BBL stars may now choose to play overseas. They have been earning less money for years now, and the privatisation would have addressed that — to their satisfaction.
There is a lot happening in Australian cricket. Only a couple of days ago, it was reported that the CA had offered its captain Pat Cummins USD 12m as part of a three-year deal so that his services could be used exclusively for Australia across formats, not hindered by franchise cricket. Cummins leads Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL and is one of the stars of the league, earning ₹18 crore (approximately USD 2m) per season.
Privatisation not happening for now!
Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg late last month had explained the hurdle.
“There may be a world where some want to do this, and some don’t, or some want to do it now, and some want to do it in another time frame. Option A for us has always been that we do it at the same time to extract the maximum value in the market.
“But clearly we’re not at that point. So we now have to reassess what comes next,” Greenberg told reporters.
“We would have to get some deep analysis to understand the impacts on Australian cricket, because if you get back to the very objective that we started with, to do this, it needs to benefit the entire sport.
“We have to look at that lens in the decisions that we make. And we’ve now got some analysis to do if that’s the case or not,” he added.
There are fears among the associations that privatisation of the BBL can take control away from them.