John Harnden and Michelle Tredenick, the last remaining survivors of the Cricket Australia board that presided over the game’s 2018 cultural scandal, are pitching to remain as directors for three of the most critical years of the game’s history.
But Melbourne and Olympic Parks chief executive Harnden, with the backing of the South Australian Cricket Association that nominated him, stands a greater chance than Tredenick, an independent director appointed in 2015 and often at odds with CA’s state owners.
Belinda Clark is widely seen as a future chair of Cricket Australia, but has other things on her mind at present.Credit:Elesa Kurtz
Senior cricket sources told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that Tredenick would only be able to continue with the support of a majority of states – a governance layer that brought down the former chair Earl Eddings last year after he lost the imprimatur of New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia.
CA’s chair Lachlan Henderson is expected to take soundings from the states as to their views before a final decision is reached ahead of the AGM in October. The next three years will take in critical deals with the players and Australian broadcasters, plus an answer to whether cricket needs access to private investment in order to keep up with overseas Twenty20 leagues.
Gender equity in leadership looms as a significant headache for CA, following the departure of Mel Jones and the possible exit of Tredenick. While CA has largely cooled some previously fractious relationships with the states, it is now falling well short of its own targets for gender diversity at the top level.
There is also a widely held view that more elite level playing experience is required on the board, following the departure of Mark Taylor in 2018.
One figure who could meet both these needs is Belinda Clark, the former national captain and then long-serving executive, who resigned from a key role as head of community cricket in 2020 after almost 20 years in managerial roles.
Asked by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald whether she would be interested in returning to CA as a board director, Clark doubted she would be able to make the time commitment as she builds her mentoring business, The Leadership Playground.
With Jones’ place on the board already sewn up as passing to the current CV chair David Maddocks – who will resign his state association post at its AGM and most likely be replaced by the seasoned figure of Ross Hepburn – CA is facing a scenario where only one female director may remain, former WA Cricket deputy chair Vanessa Guthrie.
Another experienced female director, Jacquie Hey, resigned from CA in 2020 due to the time constraints of her appointment as chair of Bendigo Bank. Should Maddocks join the board, Tredenick depart and Harnden continue, CA would be left with two vacancies for independent directors, the other being an unfilled vacancy left by Eddings.
At most, CA would then only be able to have three women on the board of 10 directors, short of the 40 per cent target set for female representation by 2022 in the governing body’s “press for progress” report.
In its new strategy, CA singled out the improvement of female participation and representation as a key area for attention, alongside multicultural and Indigenous inclusion and greater environmental sustainability.
“To accelerate the growth of cricket for women and girls, we will build on our existing initiatives,” the strategy states, “and develop an action plan to drive increased participation, engagement and representation of women and girls at all levels of Australian cricket″.
The level of communication between CA and the state associations at board level has improved considerably under the stewardship of Henderson, including his regular meetings with state chairs to keep them abreast of board agendas and plans.
In parallel, more consistent use of the Australian Cricket Council – comprising the leaders of CA, the state associations and the Australian Cricketers Association – has opened the way for more discussions of big-picture issues, such as the possibility of private investment in the game.
State chairs have been discussing possible changes to the governing body’s constitution and board structure, after they were asked in December by the CA’s then interim chair, Richard Freudenstein, to go away and decide what they wanted to see change.
An updated draft of an alternative constitution is expected to be a topic of conversation at the next ACC meeting later this month, alongside further explorations of possible privatisation models to raise fresh revenue for the game.
Constitutional questions include the model of the current nominations committee for considering possible CA directors, and also the fundamental question of whether state chairs or directors should continue to be barred from also holding spots on the CA board. An independent board structure was adopted in 2012.
