Upgrading the Billycart

GH on yesterday's announcement

Almost ready for Monza

The process of privatising the Big Bash League has advanced to its previous stage. We’re arguably at the point where we should have been a year ago, before Cricket Australia launched the project on a wing, a prayer and a Boston Consulting Group report. To keep the concept alive, however flickeringly, CA has now had to let the state chairs unburden themselves of their reservations about cricket’s overall governance and economic models, acquiesce in addressing them, undertake that nobody will be worse off, and that everyone will benefit in some way. Mightn’t have been a bad idea to have had all this agreed in advance, just saying…..

Agreement to keep talking, it’s true, represents a species of success for CA. Nobody stayed away who was missed. Nobody walked in who might have caused others to walk out. The atmosphere of the three-hour discussion was reportedly collegial, thanks perhaps to CA’s chair Mike Baird and CEO Todd Greenberg absenting themselves after half an hour. The self-determination model endures - it was, after all, a proposal of South Australia’s, even as they resolved not to take advantage of it themselves. Yet unease persists about the circumstances under which Cricket Victoria attempted to reconstitute the Melbourne Stars and the Melbourne Renegades as the Melbourne Mud and the Melbourne Hole, with our colleague Dan Cherny reporting today that this followed advice from their chair.

Cricket Victoria chair Ross Hepburn told his board and chief executive that other states would not stand in the way of Victoria exploring Big Bash League privatisation, a claim flatly disputed by other state chairs present on a call in early May.

This masthead can reveal details of the call, which has emerged as a key inflection point in CV’s decision to proceed with plans to merge the administration of the Melbourne Stars and Melbourne Renegades, selling the Renegades in full while renaming the Stars and framing them as Victoria’s BBL team.

Hepburn wasn’t there yesterday - he seems to be taking some Travis Head-style ‘personal leave’. But Cherny, an excellent journalist, reports:

It’s understood Hepburn told his board and chief executive Nick Cummins that state chairs had agreed not to stand in the way of other states making moves on privatising their BBL teams.

But when CV director Shaun Richardson — filling in for Hepburn on Monday — put this assertion to other state chairs, that version of events was strongly rejected, according to sources privy to the discussions.

Which would leave CV resembling the shoplifter caught at the door and saying: ‘Someone said I could have this.’ We should, of course, be charitable: misunderstandings happen; messages blur. But nobody’s likely to be acting unilaterally again, and the Big Bash League is almost sessile if we consider the preconditions for the self-determination model to advance:

• The structure of governance for the new Big Bash Leagues to be agreed;

• Change to the current CA governance structure to take into account the new operating model;

• Agreement to be reached on the mechanics of a self-determination model with the Australian Cricketer’s Association;

• Agreement between CA and each of the States on future funding and distribution agreements

All of which rather highlights the naivete of CA’s initial approach - their assumption that a quick sale was a good sale, that nothing else need be touched. Yesterday’s CA release continued: ‘The in-principle agreement, once conditions are met, would create the potential for Cricket Victoria to be the first State to go to market. This process would allow market testing of club valuation.’ Sure it would, but that’s like foreshadowing your entry of the Formula One drivers’ championship the minute you’ve upgraded your billy cart. From Jolimont, then, it’s still possible to discern the glint of private capital. But these folk oughtn’t to get too comfortable.