Youth cricket bodies in Australia to be centralized following adverse report

SYDNEY - Bodies governing youth cricket in Australia will be centralised after a damning report forced Cricket Australia to completely re-evaluate its structure and revenue streams.

A discussion paper, revealed yesterday in The Sun-Herald, showed huge declines in player participation and television audiences for the game.

In the past decade, it said, ratings had fallen 24 per cent.

“In a sense, it was a seminal moment. The expression I used today was wake-up call,” the general manager of communications at Cricket Australia, Peter Young, said of the paper.

He added: “There’s a definition that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different outcomes. We’re not going to do that.”

In addition to centralising youth cricket, the paper has sparked a review into the structure and administration of Cricket Australia.

It has also led to an admission that Twenty20 cricket would account for half the sport’s revenue within 20 years - leading to a reduction in Australia’s involvement with Test cricket, although Cricket Australia said this would be minimal.

Channel Nine’s director of sport in Sydney, Steve Crawley, said a new rights deal for cricket would be negotiated in 2013 and the network would bid “as hard as ever for cricket”. (ANI)