Former International Cricket Council chief executive officer Malcolm Speed said that Cricket Australia’s current CEO Kevin Roberts has failed to offer the needed clarity about the board’s complicated financial matters.
Under financial stress, CA has already put 80% of its staff on 20% salary till end of June, while a handful of others, including the executives, remained on 80% pay.
The decision saved Australian $3 million, which was slammed by critics due to the fact that CA had some Australian $90 million in reserves at the end of March, including Australian $36 million in stock investments.
Speed, also a former CA top boss, pointed out how CA had invested Australian $22 million in 2012, which increased to around Australian $45 million earlier this year before slipping to Australian $36 million due to the coronavirus shock.
“I think that’s been messy,” Speed told SEN Radio. “I saw an article saying cricket has lost millions of dollars on the stock market. Well, before it lost millions on the stock market it made millions of dollars on the stock market and its lost part of its profits, but it hasn’t lost anything yet because it hasn’t sold. That was an issue.
“I don’t think cricket’s financial issues have been explained very well, they’re quite complicated, and I think Kevin Roberts has stumbled through that and tried to clarify the issue, but it’s very difficult to follow,” Speed, who served as chief executive of CA between 1997 and 2001, added.
The 71-year-old, who had served as an ICC CEO from 2001 to 2008, feels Roberts has a lot of explaining to do.
“There’s been lots of surprise, there seemed to be surprise from staff at CA that they were stood down, so they didn’t see that one coming. So I think there’s still some explaining to be done there,” he said.
“I’d be very surprised if Kevin lost his job as a result of this, but then again I’ve been surprised by a couple of the other things that have happened.”
CA is also looking at a staggering Australian $300 million loss if the India Tour in October doesn’t go ahead. There is also the T20 World cup which Australia is scheduled to host in Octover-November.
Speed said: “Increasingly as we move through this Covid-19 situation, that seems increasingly unlikely that’s going to be able to happen.”
With PTI inputs
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