It was clear the CA leaders were eyeing more substantial roles in cricket from the start, and it is now beyond doubt that they will forever be referred to as a duo
Daniel Brettig03-Oct-2018Lillee and Thomson, Parish and Steele, Border and Simpson, Taylor and Slater, Langer and Hayden… Peever and Roberts? While they may not be storied cricketers, it is now beyond doubt that Cricket Australia’s leaders will forever be referred to as a duo.In 2012, on the day CA unveiled its first independent Board members after a lengthy constitutional battle with the state associations, the biggest fuss was made over Jacquie Hey becoming the first female director in the history of the governing body.For all the goodwill that appointment may have engendered, however, it was the announcement of the other two directors that has had a far greater impact on the direction of the game – six years later they are the soon-to-be-re-elected chairman David Peever, and the new chief executive Kevin Roberts.Right from the start, it was clear that both Peever and Roberts were eyeing off more substantial roles in cricket. Peever was soon to announce his retirement as the managing director of Rio Tinto in Australia, a job less impressive than its title and associated more with lobbying in Canberra than running the mining company. Roberts, Melbourne-based though a former New South Wales batsman, was younger, more outwardly polished with no shortage of ambition.In the intervening years they have conducted a sort of relay run to the top of Australian cricket: in 2014, Peever won the blessing of the Board to replace Wally Edwards as chairman of CA; in 2015, Roberts left the board to become executive general manager of One Team, strategy and people, replacing Alex Wyatt, a role that evolved into making him the link man between CA and all the states.Things upped in pace in 2017, when Roberts was commissioned with the task of leading MoU negotiations with the Australian Cricketers Association, while concocting the Board’s confrontational strategy and intent to breakup revenue sharing in close cahoots with Peever. It looked at the time like a rehearsal for the chief executive’s job, with the Board being in broad agreement that James Sutherland, no matter how well he had done his job, had simply been there too long.The MoU saga has been well and truly documented, but it suffices to say it ended only after players went unemployed for nearly a month, an Australia A tour of South Africa was cancelled, a Test tour of Bangladesh was threatened, and with CA and the ACA under direct pressure from the Federal Government to sort out their differences post-haste. Roberts, for a long time the spearhead of CA’s industrial relations attack despite his history as a former player, was sidelined at the finish because the ACA refused to work with him. Compromise was left to Sutherland and the team performance manager Pat Howard, and when the deal was finally signed, neither Roberts nor Peever were anywhere to be seen.Nevertheless, the cutting back of the time available to negotiate allowed for a hasty collective agreement in which CA was able to further narrow the definition of Australian Cricket Revenue – the pot of money out of which the players’ percentage is paid – while also securing a significant extra pool of money for the game’s lower levels. The end, Peever and the board reasoned internally, had justified the means. They did so without knowing how much this pay war would damage CA’s standing or its relationship with the players, precious few of whom were impressed by Roberts’ personal entreaties to them “as an ACA life member” during negotiations.Roberts, meanwhile, grew ever more prominent within CA’s Jolimont offices and was even chosen instead of Sutherland to present jointly to the ICC at one of its meetings early this year alongside Peever. Certainly, it was clear to other long-term executives in the building that Roberts had the imprimatur of the chairman to replace Sutherland whenever the time came, as the likes of chief financial officer Kate Banozic and head of operations Mike McKenna jumped ship after their heads thudded into the organisation’s glass ceiling.Elsewhere there were those with ambitions to be Sutherland’s successor. In New South Wales, both the chairman John Warn and the chief executive Andrew Jones saw themselves as eminently capable, having jointly presented to the CA Board about their achievements in Australia’s largest cricket state. In Western Australia, the WACA chief executive Christina Matthews could point to a record in building a strongly performing organisation out of chaotic beginnings.All thought their chances had increased when the South Africa tour took a turn towards lawlessness, sandpaper, cheating and disgrace for David Warner, Steven Smith and Cameron Bancroft. The national team had pointedly ignored the counsel of Sutherland and the Board to smarten up after their boorish display in the first Test of the series, and were left spiralling the entire organisation into a hole at the very moment of critical broadcast rights negotiations.This pressure did not appear to bring the best out of Peever, as revealed in his email attack upon the Ten Network’s American owners CBS, while the paper trail back to the MoU also seemed to blot the copybook of Roberts. Certainly, the conduct of the chairman and the likely succession plan for Roberts were too much for the former Wesfarmers chairman and CA director Bob Every, who quit in protest at Peever’s decision to seek a second three-year term.Cricket Australia chairman David Peever (left) and chief executive James Sutherland at the ICC annual conference•IDI/Getty ImagesIt is believed that Every initially thought he was not alone in his reservations, before finding himself isolated at the moment of key discussion. The circumstances of his exit, ultimately revealed by The Australian, reflected a level of internal discord not seen at CA Board level since the then chief executive Graham Halbish was sacked by his chairman Denis Rogers as far back as 1997. Sutherland, counselled keenly by his predecessor Malcolm Speed and his first chairman Bob Merriman, had invariably managed to avoid such scenes despite many junctures at which they may easily have flamed up. This, at least, is a lesson Roberts has learned.”I’m always conscious that actions speak louder than words, and James has imparted advice on me, but I’d say the most powerful advice has been through his actions,” Roberts said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anyone respect their office as much as James, the office of CEO at CA, and that is something I have deep respect for as well. Not through James’ words but through his actions over the 14 or so years that I’ve known him, he’s been a great role model for any Australian who leads any organisation in terms of the way that he respected that responsibility. So it’s been through his actions more than through his words.”Those actions had included sending the head of integrity Iain Roy to South Africa to lead a code of conduct investigation of the Newlands affair. Roy, a long-serving and well-liked member of CA’s management team despite the many complexities and difficulties of his role, returned home to the holidays he had broken away from as an acclaimed operator. Yet on the day of his return, Roberts and the head of legal Christine Harman deigned that he march out of the building without so much as a farewell. Many were left to ask, not for the first time, what is the reward at CA for a faithful servant?Simon Longstaff’s review of the governing body, commissioned to help calm the hysteria after Newlands, was furnished with many more such examples of internal disquiet, but its recently submitted substance did little to sway Peever, in particular, from pushing for Roberts to replace Sutherland. This despite the emergence of another candidate in the Board director John Harnden, who possessed not only the internal knowledge espoused by Peever in his reasoning for choosing Roberts, but also a wealth of outside experience in sports administration and event management.Whatever the credentials of others, or the fee paid to the recruitment firm Egon Zehnder, Roberts remained confident of his ground and of his chances throughout. In the minutes after his appointment was formally announced, he answered the obvious question – how could he be expected to drive significant change to the organisation when he had for so long already been a senior part of it?”I think that’s a very fair question,” he said. “Just as I spoke about James’ actions as opposed to his words, I’ll look to be judged the same way and I’m not going to spin anything to people right now on that front, but what I will say is we’re committed evolving, to learning, and to changing for our changing times, just as the organisation has done over its long and proud history. So there’s no words to describe that today, but happy to be judged by my actions and our actions as an organisation.”As for Roberts’ administrative doubles partner Peever, shortly to become only the second CA chairman since World War II to serve two consecutive terms, there were words that belied a lofty corporate background, and years of full-time political maneuvering. “I see the role of administrators as being a lowly servant of something much greater than ourselves,” he said. “We get the privilege of being part of these things for short times and our job is to make sure and do everything we can to make sure that the game is as strong and as sound in 30 years, and stronger in fact, than it is today.”As a duo, then, Peever and Roberts will be joined together in history. What sort of place they occupy will be determined by whether or not their actions can overcome the strong perception that this has been a joint pursuit of power all along.