BBL Privatisation's Kamikaze Close Out

PL on the latest outbreak of hostilities between the Australian states over the BBL privatisation

A big wave breaks at Nazare

The current work on possible CA governance reform was agreed as part of the Nazare process. If Nazare were paused, that governance work would logically be paused as well. No Member sought, and the meeting did not agree, that all Nazare work should stop until governance reform is resolved.

The good old Nazare process, eh?

Only the bravest dare to catch the monster wave that breaks on that picturesque Portuguese coastline, a wave so large that those who ride it write their names into legend and one so cataclysmic that life has been lost and terrible injury sustained when that attempt goes wrong.

The BBL privatisation process is no place for the faint-hearted either, with developments in the past few days ensuring a process that had shifted from the collaborative to the chaotic and compromised is caught inside again.

‘Project Nazare’ was the name given to the BBL privatisation push in the original Boston Consulting Group report advocating such a move.

And so Australian cricket, having invoked a surfing metaphor during its closed-door meetings, presumably with visions of the franchises being towed onto that huge breaking wave of private capital, finds itself not so much riding toward a bright new BBL future, as being pounded by in the shallows.

On the day the NRL, run by majestic dictator Peter V’landys, announced a seriously impressive broadcast deal, cricket turned on itself once more, states divided, confusion rampant, claim and counterclaim.

The leaders of Australian cricket, the people tasked with steering the game, can’t even agree on what was agreed to. And that’s a situation which should concern every lover of the game.