Christina Matthews has been the Western Australian Cricket Association chief executive for nearly 11 years. She was general manager of commercial operations at Cricket NSW for a decade before that.
She has survived – and thrived – in leadership roles of a male-dominated sport.
WACA chief executive Christina Matthews.Credit:Heather McNeill
This is not an accident.
Four members of the WACA board, including a former WA minister and two Sheffield Shield-winning heroes from the state’s 80s golden era, have recently resigned.
Another board member – prominent Perth KC Tom Percy – says there should be a review into the organisation’s governance to get to the bottom of what he considers to be discord within the association.
On the field, WA’s success is unparalleled.
The men’s team just broke a 23-year Shield drought, adding the first-class title to white ball titles in the Marsh Cup and for the Perth Scorchers.
The women won their first Big Bash League title.
Off the field, the association has weathered the loss of marquee matches, including a cash-cow Ashes Test and the vast bulk of last summer’s Scorchers campaign, amid government-imposed COVID-19 border closures.
The lack of international matches has been a source of complaint from disgruntled members who wonder at the value offered by their annual subscription fees.
Some are unhappy with the benefits of membership at $1 billion Optus Stadium relative to their former accommodations on the other side of the Swan River in East Perth, complaints that seem churlish given the comparative offerings.
A redevelopment of the historic but decrepit WACA ground is on foot; under Matthews’ leadership it has managed to secure funding commitments from state and federal governments worth $100 million.
That money may not be enough with the project’s cost, understood to have escalated over budget in line with the general cost inflation that has hit major infrastructure projects.
The extra cash will have to be found or the project scaled back.
It is, of all things, a proposal for statues that has become the flashpoint for tensions that have bubbled under the surface for years.
As part of the redevelopment, it is proposed that three statues be erected; of fast bowling legend Dennis Lillee, of women’s cricket trailblazer Zoe Goss, and of a 19th Century team of Aboriginal cricketers from New Norcia dubbed The Invincibles.
The concept, as Matthews explained it on 6PR on Tuesday, is that the statues represent three strands of men’s, women’s and Aboriginal cricket.
Opponents argue it is disrespectful to Lillee, inarguably the greatest cricketer WA has produced, to have Goss, who played 12 Test and 65 ODIs when far fewer games were fixtures than today, and the Aboriginal players elevated to his level.
The criticism appears to miss the point of the gesture, which is less about immortalising the record of the individuals as telling an inclusive story about the sort of sporting body WACA aspires to be.
Let it be said Lillee has not wanted for (deserved) recognition; he is one of only five non-Victorians immortalised in bronze among the 13 statues outside the MCG, and the WACA’s Lillee-Marsh stand has carried his name since its opening in 1988.
In an interview on 6PR’s Mornings with Liam Bartlett, Matthews said on Tuesday that her relationship with the board “as a whole is fine”.
“It’s no surprise to anybody that in my entire tenure here, traditionalists have not been happy with having a female progressive CEO. I’ve lived with that for 10 years. The fact that other people still are concerned about me and the way I manage, it’s just day-to-day business for me,” she said.
One of the resigned board members – himself a former WACA chief executive and WA captain Graeme Wood – rejected any suggestion gender was the issue while backing Percy’s call for an inquiry.
“I just think the best person should be in the role, whether it’s male, female, whatever,” he said.
Wood says he suggested an alternative female cricketer, Shelley Nitschke, or members of the breakthrough BBL team, but that the statue project didn’t make sense in the context of rising costs for the ground redevelopment.
But this fight deep down isn’t really about statues.
Matthews – who took heat from some quarters a few years back when she suggested dropping terms like “batsman” and “third man” on inclusivity grounds – is an unapologetically progressive leader.
She thinks it’s important to grow the cricket community beyond its traditional base, she has a vision of how she wants to do it, and she’s not much concerned about who that upsets.
And to date, she keeps outlasting the critics.
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