As JONATHAN HOWCROFT writes, a Channel Nine executive has put Cricket Australia under the pump with the suggestion the network may have a role in team selection.
Michael Bodey has reported in The Australian that Nine Network's managin...
As JONATHAN HOWCROFT writes, a Channel Nine executive has put Cricket Australia under the pump with the suggestion the network may have a role in team selection.
Michael Bodey has reported in The Australian that Nine Network's managing director Jeffrey Browne believes his company has a remit to influence the selection of the Australian Test cricket team.
Cricket Australia has played down the suggestion but its modest fire-fighting media statement, issued around two hours after Bodey's story was published online, is not the most emphatic ever circulated.
In Bodey's piece, Browne sets alarm bells ringing with the comment on player rotation: "Last year that balance was skewed too much in favour of resting some players so from now on there will be a lot more discussion between CA and the broadcaster about that."
Browne later reconfirms, perhaps more insidiously, "I am not pushing a black letter print solution because I believe the discussions we've had with them [CA] so far will give us a solution".
In other words, Nine doesn't need a bullet point in a contract because a gentleman's agreement has been struck at a level of seniority sufficient not to require one.
Cricket Australia's statement in CEO James Sutherland's name attempts to defuse the situation without expressly refuting Browne's claims.
"The National Selection Panel selects the Australian teams. With the volume of international cricket being played, it will continue to be necessary for us to manage player workloads appropriately," it says.
All of which adds up – on the surface, at least - to a potentially very embarrassing shemozzle.
So what's going on – or at least, what can we hypothesise is going on?
There's a chance Bodey misheard Browne and The Oz will be forced into a retraction. This seems unlikely given the details provided.
There's a chance Browne somehow misunderstood a nuanced conversation or he was misguided about his network's capacity to influence team selection; that he was over-egging the pudding somewhat to satisfy his ego in front of an audience. Considering Browne's seniority and the implication that 'a solution' has been discussed, this also seems improbable.
There's a chance Cricket Australia has made a deal with Nine involving the network having a say on selection, that was intended to remain secret. CA is now deeply embarrassed that this has become public knowledge and is in damage limitation mode. Taking Browne at his word, this seems most likely.
Thursday and Friday should play host to the most entertaining cricket spin since Shane Warne.
If Bodey's story proves to be accurate, Cricket Australia has placed itself in an invidious position that it is difficult to see it defending.
It seems absurd to even contemplate how a television network, whose aims are commercial, not sporting, could take such an active role in team affairs.
With this information now in the public domain it is impossible to imagine such an agreement could be seen to be followed through, let alone implemented. The public outcry would be deafening.
It would be naïve to believe relationships between sporting bodies and their broadcast partners have not entered murky territory in the past, but there's a clear difference between scheduling manipulation – see the AFL and NRL's fixturing each year as Exhibit A - and the delivery of 'Chief Executive pitches' to having a voice at a selection committee.
By even being seen to hint at handing over a skerrick of selection responsibility to an individual or agency not under the jurisdiction of Cricket Australia, the game's governing body will have seriously damaged its custodianship.
The line between sport as competitive endeavour and as entertainment has long been narrowing, but allowing television network executives to intervene in team selection would be crossing a Rubicon.
Following a farcical tour of India and a tour of England already in disarray, Cricket Australia has little credit in the bank with the Australia
