There was plenty to digest for Australian cricket after the findings of two reviews into the game were revealed on Monday. Here is a selection of the media reaction
Greg Baum, The Age
The individual could only dissemble and squirm. Peever said he had taken responsibility, “voluntarily” commissioning two “independent” reports and transparently and fully releasing their contents and findings. As if he had any choice to order up the reports. As if they could credibly have been anything other than independent… And yet still presiding is the man who sat atop the previous dispensation, the one that neglected the spirit of cricket, for which he says he accepts full responsibility while everyone else cleans out their lockers and desks. Even if only as a figurehead, it is an uncomfortable position for him, incongruous in the eyes of the cricket world; in a word, untenable.
Tracey Holmes, ABC
Cricket has become a commodity, a business, where only numbers matter, and the human element — ethics, morals and personal values — has diminished to the point of hardly being recognised. Cricket Australia did not deliberately set out to get to this position but, the Ethics Centre report suggests, it was a foreseeable consequence of the way the governing body has gone about making the success of the men’s team the measure of its reputational standing.
Patrick Smith, The Australian
Peever could not middle any delivery aimed at knowing why he is still in charge of the sport when even the most sympathetic interpretation of good governance would demand he step away. The review by The Ethics Centre identified what was essentially a cultural cesspool. Deaf to advice, irrational abhorrence to defeat, crass and offensive behaviour, barely a trace of respect between officials and players. Peever, as chairman, and others within Cricket Australia, had to accept responsibility because they failed hopelessly to show appropriate leadership.
Gideon Haigh, The Australian
In a corporate model, there are external agents, such as regulators, such as institutions, such as government. Chairs resign; boards reconstitute; executives get fired, and even have bonuses clawed back. At Jolimont, somehow, a small elite award themselves promotions, new terms, fat benefits, cheery farewells. Let’s not forget that the only reason we have been afforded this glimpse of the degree of cricket’s organisational dysfunction is because a vigilant cameraman spied a cricketer scratching a cricket ball; otherwise CA would still be stumbling along counting its millions, oblivious to the players’ discomfiture and the public’s discontent.
Sam Perry, The Guardian
It is a wicked problem for the governing body. Already under pressure from a sceptical public to enact concrete change following Dr Longstaff’s findings, any decision to uphold the player bans without requisite and tangible leadership accountability would smack of the precise double-standards they stand accused of in the culture review. Should their executive survival instinct remain strong, another route would be to reduce the bans applied to the trio, though it would infer poor original judgment. But it takes special mental gymnastics to at once reform a “win at all costs” attitude, and to simultaneously conclude that Smith and Warner deserve an early return. Australia will of course win more games with these two in the side.
Robert Craddock, News Corp
Administrators can pound the pulpit as much as they like but the success of any renewed push for the spirit of cricket rests squarely on the shoulders of the players. Passion tends to be at its strongest at the start of projects. If player commitment is patchy now, how will it be when the battle starts? The most significant part of the review is Australia is now a prisoner of its own improved standards. The bar has been lifted. The standard has been set. Now, can anybody bat?
Source: ESPN Crickinfo