Calls to overhaul Cricket Australia gain strength
Australian Cricketers’ Association has joined the bandwagon calling for a complete overhaul of Cricket Australia in the wake of Australia’s recent Ashes fiasco against traditional rivals, England.
Australia, the reigning four-time World Champions are going through their worst period in international cricket in the past decade. The side has not won a series in any format of the game since http://www.senore.com/Cricket/March-c74391 2010. Their last series victory was Chappell-Hadlee
Trophy against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 which the Aussies won 3-2.
Their latest humiliation came at the hands of Ashes rivals England in the 2010-11 Ashes series which they lost by 1-3. What was more devastating was that Australia lost all of their matches by a margin of at least an innings.
The Australian Cricketers’ Association feels the “fundamentally flawed” archaic governance structure of the game is the main reason behind the continuously plunging form of the Aussies.
The opinion of the players and the members of the association was backed by the chief executive of the ACA, Paul Marsh who has asked for the establishment of an independent commission to run Australian cricket.
“The structure of Australian cricket's governance model is fundamentally flawed,” said Marsh.
The 100-year-old structure of Cricket Australia consisting of 14 board members was heavily criticised by the Australian Cricketers’ Association. In the current setup of the CA, the 14-member board also includes a random number of delegates
from the six states of the country but the ACA has demanded the current board to be replaced by a high-powered body comprising leaders from their fields.
He said that the dual role of board officials, as CA members as well as directors of their state cricket, leads to the conflicts between what is best for the national cricket and what is best for their state.
“Directors are put in positions where they have to make decisions which may be good for one of their boards but not the other,” added Marsh.
Meanwhile, the chairman of Cricket http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746, Jack Clarke said that any kind of alteration in governance would need a complete revamping at national as well as state level. Clarke, however, did not rule out the possibility of a review.
“If you just put the nine wisest men or women in the world in charge they have still got the same reporting structures to the states,” said http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Clarke-c51120. “If a review is going to achieve anything meaningful it must look far beyond the structure
of the board, it's got to look at the structure of Australian cricket,” he added.
The CA chairman also gave his backing to the existing board composition, saying that it might not be a perfect structure but had served the national game pretty well.
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