10 Things #58

GH on privatisation, primary colours and secondhand banjos

1/ Samsa remained studiously indifferent to the Lord’s Test….

…but was thoroughly immersed in events in Mirpurrrrrr.

2/ And why not? It has been gruesome watching for Australians - the batting timid, the bowling ineffectual, the fielding indifferent, the general sense of hoping nobody was watching. Perhaps just as telling, however, was the uninhibited and unintimidated quality of the cricket from Bangladesh, in contrast to the bygone days when Australian teams of any description were preceded by an aura of success. While conscious that this was an isolated, little-watched, mid-winter series, it has been hard to resist a sense of foreboding about what lies just over the horizon - is Australian cricket’s future a kind of mid-table proficiency, as it disappears into the maw of private capital?

3/ Surprisingly, perhaps, I remain on the Cricket Victoria mailing list, which last week brought this.

Obviously terms and conditions apply, such as who the hell will be playing. But the quiz question Cricket Victoria kept avoiding was how CEO Nick Cummins could represent them at Monday’s meeting of state chairs when he isn’t a director, and is currently the game’s most radioactive administrator, having smelted the Stars and Renegades into the Melbourne Murk? At last it has been acknowledged that he won’t - it will be some other member of CV’s largely supine board. They are getting a lot of unsolicited advice, even from those cordially disposed to private investment, such as former Australian Sports Commissioner (and ex-Yarras player) John Wylie:

Even if CV’s commercial objective is accepted, this is a strange way to run an auction process. The time-tested way to maximise outcomes and allow informed trade-offs is to keep your options open for as long as possible. Restructure your commercial offering at the end of a process if needs be to achieve a great outcome, not at the start when you have no information. Tell would-be investors, if they want CV to blow up the Stars and Renegades brands after 15 years of investment, that you’ll consider that, but only if they pay you enough to motivate you to do it.

There’s also a very good chance CV as the first seller of a BBL licence will get an inferior deal. There are no pricing benchmarks. All you’re doing is setting a pricing benchmark for other states to beat when they come to sell. The history of sequential auctions in new and opaque markets is it’s generally the sellers around a third or halfway through a process who get the best deals.

Moreover, the only thing a first buyer will know with certainty is they will be the owner of one franchise competing with seven others owned by the party setting the rules for the competition. If I was the investor facing that risk profile, I’d discount my price. Maybe they won’t and CV will look like crazy-brave heroes when a deal is done, but they’re stacking the odds against themselves. The outcome matters a lot, not just to Victorian cricket but Australian cricket as a whole. A Melbourne team is one of the most valuable franchises CA has to offer.