James Sutherland

And eventually, Cricket Australia had to cave, and it cost a lot of guys their jobs at the top there.

Uh, it was the last thing James Sutherland was involved in before he finally resigned.

And he had to go to the Cricket Austral- uh, Australian Cricketers' Association with cap in hand and get both parties together to sign a new MOU, and then everything moved on.

And then within 12 months, the players had just blown everything up in their faces with Sandpaper Gate and everything else that happened after that.

So that's what it's about.

I can tell you, I had a meeting with the Cricket Australia, with James Sutherland, when he was the boss of it, when I was CEO of Channel 9.

And at that stage, they only had one 2020 Big Bash game on.

It used to be Australia versus whoever it was.

Is it for professional golfing or is it club golfing?

To me, it seems to be a club situation, but why would it not go through to a professional? We need James Sutherland, the head of Golf Australia, to clarify.

I find it a very, very interesting situation.

Just 15 seconds for me.

His report recommended the privatization of the Big Bash and the getting rid of the federated structure that controls Australian cricket, in which you have state associations reporting to a board, um, and a CEO in charge of that board.

For most of the 2010s it was James Sutherland.

Crawford wanted to do away with that and put a commission in place, and this is extremely important given the current impasse in Australian cricket where Mike Baird, the current chairman, and Todd Greenberg, the current CEO, are trying to push through fri- private, uh, privatization and are being blocked by two state associations, and it, it, it appears that it will go through incrementally.

Now, this was a problem in 2012.

There was like an under 19 World Cup where Australia didn't even feature

... and James Sutherland, when they pulled out of the 2018 series, basically said, "We will only play them when there is World Test Championships points on the line."

Wow.

Right? And, and what's hilarious about all that is, of course, is as you said before, um, you're now in a situation where, um, uh, where Bangladesh have won a test and some of these other Asian teams haven't won a test in Australia-

20- 2018, they, they canceled that series.

They literally just said, "We don't wanna spend the money on it because it'll be in footy season, and no one cares." And at that point, James Sutherland was still in the job, and he said, "Oh-

Yeah

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