David Peever, the Cricket Australia chairman, was heavily criticised by Bob Every, the most experienced director on his Board, when the latter resigned his commission earlier this year.
In an email revealed by The Australian, the former Wesfarmers chairman Every described Peever’s chairmanship of CA as “substandard”, while also outlining the reasons for his decision to quit the Board five months before his term was due to be up for re-election at the 2018 annual general meeting.
“The list is long but in my opinion his handling of the MoU, the media negotiations, his ‘fake’ resignation and particularly his handling of succession planning for the CEO leave a lot to be desired,” Every wrote in an email that enlarged upon the “falling out” between him and Peever that had been reported in May.
“As you all know, I recently had a major falling out with the chairman and found his comments to me offensive and insulting. The way he handled the issue of my standing for re-election is just another example of what I regard as his sub-standard performance as a chairman.”
The falling out between Every and Peever had been at a key point in CA’s media rights negotiations, in which the governing body chose to accept a AUD1.18 billion deal with News Corporation and the Seven Network while cutting ties with Nine, the major broadcaster of the game in Australia for the past 40 years, and Ten, which had played a key role in growing the audience for the Big Bash League.
The resignation of Every took place on May 4, in formal correspondence that stated: “I am resigning because I am opposed to David Peever being appointed for a second term as chairman of Cricket Australia. As I am a solitary voice in this regard, and I regard it as a material matter, I am resigning as a matter of principle.”
Peever had attacked Ten in correspondence with the CBS executive Armando Nunez, after CA rejected a joint broadcast rights bid by Ten and Nine as “non-compliant”. Peever described local management of Ten as “bottom feeders” to Nunez. “Unfortunately, your team has completely messed this up,” Peever wrote. “I expected much more, given our discussions and the unique position we were affording 10. Frankly, the tactics are appalling on a number of levels.” He then added that “I feel they [Ten] are not prepared to challenge their operating model to be anything other than bottom feeders in this market.”
Every’s email outlined the fact that Peever offered his resignation to the Board after this email was made public in a report by Fairfax Media. This sequence occurred at the same time as Peever was announcing reviews of CA and the Australian men’s team following the Cape Town ball-tampering scandal.
“I think we’re all going to come under the microscope in terms of what is occurring back in the organisation that might have contributed to this,” Peever told reporters in Brisbane at the time. “But I can tell you this, circumstances like this are not the time for witch- hunts. I know people in these circumstances call for everybody to be sacked. Clearly, that isn’t going to solve any problems. What we must do now is work on the issues that we have and we take responsibility for fixing them and making them better.”
Since his resignation, Every has refused to speak publicly about the circumstances in which he quit the Board, while Peever has chosen to speak only to selected media outlets on subjects of his choice. In the meantime, the longtime CA chief executive James Sutherland has chosen to announce his resignation, with a shortlist for his successor being deliberated upon by the Board of the governing body.
It has also been embroiled in a major fight about the dismissal of the Tasmanian government relations manager Angela Williamson, who was removed after she criticised the state government’s policy approach to abortions. After the two parties failed to resolve the matter at the Fair Work Commission, Williamson and her legal representatives have taken the matter to the Federal Court.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo