SPIRO: The state of cricket in NSW is just great

One of the oldest adages in Australian cricket is that when NSW is strong, Australian cricket is strong. How is this working out right now?

We know Australian cricket is strong. The doldrums of past defeats have given way to a series of vibrant Test wins for the baggy greens. The Ashes have been regained in splendid style and the number 1 Test side in world cricket, South Africa, was defeated in a thrilling series, in South Africa.

We won’t talk about the failure at the World T20 tournament. There are justifiable hopes, though, for a strong Australian showing at next year’s World One Day Tournament.

The Australian women national XI has just won the World T20 Women’s Championship in a typically aggressive batting and bowling performance.

To find out whether this formidable record of achievement, by the men and women’s national cricket teams, is matched and, in fact, ballasted by cricketers from NSW, I went down to the SCG precinct recently to chat to the relatively-new CEO of Cricket New South Wales, Andrew Jones.

Any time I go into the SCG precinct I get the same sort of feeling that overcomes other, more pious people when they are at, say, Chartres Cathedral. For me, the SCG is one of Australia’s sacred sites.

The memory of the great players who have graced the ground is very strong. It is something that you can breathe in and for a moment or so, vivid pictures of the elegant, lofty driving of the immortal Victor Trumper, the plundering Don Bradman, the lethal run-ups and intense deliveries of Ray Lindwall or Alan Davidson, and the open-shirted, sporty bowling and batting of the great Richie Benaud, take over your mind’s eye.

Andrew Jones showed me around the CNSW offices, which overlook the SCG. In the foyer, in pride of place on display, is the Sheffield Shield, which was won by NSW for the first time in six years. I was reminded, too, that the NSW women’s XI won the Women’s National Cricket League tournament, a 50-over format, for the ninth time in a row.

As we were making our way through the building, I noticed a remarkably beautiful, large painting of a cricket team leaving the field at the end of the day’s play. The shadows of the trees cast their long, dark shadows across the green of the field as the players, one of whom had a remarkable resemblance to Arthur Morris, made their way to the pavilion.

The painting was titled: Stumps. There was no artist’s name on it. I asked Andrew who had painted it and was surprised by his reply: “Arthur Mailey, the highest wicket-taker for NSW.”

Mailey is well-known for his achievements on the field as the first in a long line of great NSW leg-spinners. He would offer batsmen a cigar if they hit his viciously-spinning, high-flighted leggies for a six. Post-cricket, Mailey became a journalist and cartoonist for several Sydney newspapers.

He also wrote books about cricket. In one of them, his description of how as a youngster he deceived and dismissed Victor Trumper with a new-fangled wrong’un, is one of the most memorable cricket observations ever made: “I felt like a boy who had just destroyed a dove.”

At the top of the stairs, leading to Andrew’s second floor office, there was a splendid painting by Dave Thomas of the best NSW cricket team from the state’s first 150 years of play. The selected 12 players were lined up in two rows, one standing and the other sitting, in the traditional cricket team pose: Billy Murdoch (wicketkeeper) Charles Turner, Alan Davidson, Bill O’Reilly, Victor Trumper, Ray Lindwall, Charles McCartney, Bob Simpson, Arthur Morris, Steve Waugh, Richie Benaud and in the middle of first row, the captain, Sir Donald Bradman.

The 150 year painting hanging at the SCG (Photo courtesy of Cricket NSW)

One of the staff members pointed out that Glenn McGrath was not selected because he played – and this is a commentary on how the professional game takes players away from the grassroots – 11 first class matches for NSW. Keith Miller and Neil Harvey didn’t make the team either. The reason for this, I guess, is that the NSW team is properly a State of Origin side and Miller and Harvey learnt their cricket in Victoria.

Andrew Jones told me, when we were finally in his office, that CNSW is the peak body that runs and co-ordinates cricket in the state at every level, with the help of the schools, clubs and the various associations.

Last season, 308,000 men, women, boys and girls played cricket in NSW. There was an increase of 17 per cent in these numbers over the season before, a rise that Andrew puts down to Australia’s success in the Ashes series and the transition of the Big Bash League to free-to-air television.

CNSW is now a $35 million a year organisation. This income will increase next year – and, hopefully, in the following years, as well – by upwards of $1 to $2 million.

CNSW is using these numbers and its commercial success with the SCG Test and the Big Bash to reinvest in the game, for example, by providing better facilities via co-investment grants to cricket communities around the state.

The vision for CNSW is expansive:

• To be the number one domestic cricket organisation in the world.
• The leader in producing players for Australia, both male and female.
• To win all the titles, tournaments and championships available.
• To be an authentic lobbying organisation with the state government for better facilities for cricket at the grassroots levels.
• To be a production line in developing first class cricketers for NSW and the other states.
• To grow the cricket fan-base throughout the state.

A key driver to achieve this vision is the Big Bash, in which CNSW has two teams. The Sixers plays out of the SCG and came second on the ladder last season, with average match crowds of 20,000. The Thunder has struggled to win matches at the ANZ Stadium but attracted on average 14,000 spectators to its matches and has begun to improve.

Here’s the point, though. The average TV viewing audience on Channel Ten for each Big Bash match was a whopping 931,000 people. Let’s put this into context. The average TV viewing audience for an AFL game was 600,000. For NRL 580,000. Football’s A-League and Super Rugby, both of them admittedly condemned to pay-TV audiences only, were about 110,000 and 100,000.

The Sixers (980,000) and, despite its lack of success, The Thunder (890,000), are easily the most-supported Sydney-based clubs in terms of average TV audience for each game. The South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Swans are both a touch under 800,000 viewers. The Roosters are on 700,000 viewers. The GWS Giants 300,000. Sydney FC, Western Sydney Wanderers and the Waratahs (all restricted to pay-TV) are all around 100,000 viewers.

Andrew also gave me charts with some surprising outcomes – one which showed the team sponsorships, for example. The Swans get about $5m. The South Sydney Rabbitohs just over $3m. The GWS Giants around the same $3m mark. The Waratahs receive sponsorships of just over $2m and the Sydney Roosters around the same mark. Sydney FC gets about $1m.

The Sydney Sixers and The Sydney Thunder have a combined sponsorship income of about $800,000. The last season saw an increase of this sponsorship money by nearly four times from the previous year.

Achieving this sort of increase year after year is one of the obvious challenges that Andrew Jones faces.

Is he up to it?

My experience with CEOs of CNSW really only involves meeting the legendary Bob Radford, the boss of NSW cricket in the 1980s and 1990s, mainly at social functions. Stories about Bob Radford and his extraordinary talent for having a great time, while doing everything possible to encourage and develop young talent, even finding them jobs in his office, border on the awesome.

His funeral service at the SCG, where the great, the good and bad of Australian cricket and political life gathered, was one of those great Sydney occasions – in the same tradition of Victor Trumper’s funeral procession through the largest crowd ever gathered in the streets of Sydney.

Radford operated in an environment where cricket didn’t have a lot of money and did not have access to the television money-making fountain. To keep the game viable, CEOs had to be inventive – part conmen, part manipulators and always on top of limiting expenditures because of the limited sources of incomes. Larger-than-life characters like the Bob Radford carried off this exercise and in doing so preserved the status of cricket as the national game.

We now live in the age of the bottom line, of marketing, extensive television and the internet, which is opening all sorts of revenue streams, or potential revenue streams, and creating challenges for eyes and dollars. Andrew Jones seems to be the right person to be CEO of CNSW in this new.

When he was appointed, the CNSW handout referred to his work with McKinsey and Company and the boutique consultancy Centaurus Partners. He was, too, Cricket Australia’s first Head of Strategy.

I also like the fact that at the time of his appointment he was president of the University of NSW Cricket Club. When the club was threatened with being kicked out of Sydney grade cricket in the late 1990s (how stupid was this!), he helped make the case for its retention.

He says he has “a passion for the game”. He has a law degree. He has written TV comedy shows. And he has won substantial amounts of money on quiz shows. He is the ideal person to lead NSW cricket to continuing greatness.

At the end of our chat, I asked him about the young cricket talent coming through. I prefaced my question with the observation that NSW has produced not only a succession of great players, but there has been a certain NSW style – very aggressive and with wicket-taking intent from both the fast bowlers and the spinners.

With the batsmen, there has been a ruthless run-getting mentality, tempered with an elegance that is the hallmark of the great NSW batsman. A few NSW batsmen who, although great and a treat to watch, could not make the 150th anniversary team include Alan Kippax, Stan McCabe, Norm O’Neill and Mark Waugh.

Andrew told me that CNSW had recently re-signed Pat Cummins, along with several other extremely promising fast bowlers such as Josh Hazlewood.

Among the young rising batsmen are Nic Maddinson (who Steve Waugh says might be the best of the young batsmen in Australia), Ryan Carters, a new opener who scored 861 runs at an average in the 50s in Shield cricket this season, and Peter Nevill, a keeper-batsman of outstanding potential.

Is there, I asked him, a prodigy somewhere in the state, a marvellous boy from the bush or ‘burbs to light up the cricket world in future years?

“Keep an eye on Jake Doran,” Andrew told me. “He’s a top order left hand batsman from Canberra. He’s still at school. Last year he played against England at Alice Springs. He is the youngest player to score a century for the NSW Second XI.”

And who was the previous youngest? “Doug Walters,” was the reply.

It seems to me that with young talent like this coming through and with its current level of success, cricket in NSW is in great shape. That was my thought as I walked once again through the SCG precinct, the home of all the greatness we’d been talking about.