CA board structure to be revolutionised

	CA's new chairman Wally Edwards has been supportive of board reform © Getty Images Enlarge
Related Links Interviews : 'Miss this opportunity and it'll put cricket back five years' In Focus: Australian cricket under review Players/Officials: Wally Edwards Teams: Australia

Read parts one and two of the Crawford and Carter Governance review here

Australian cricket's governance is to be revolutionised, with each of Australian cricket's state associations to be asked to approve a reformed and reduced Cricket Australia board structure that removes a century-old imbalance of power to afford equal rights to each of the states.

Wally Edwards, CA's recently appointed chairman, described the looming changes as "the most sweeping in CA's 105-year history".

Under the terms recommended to the board by David Crawford and Colin Carter's governance review, the number of directors would be reduced from the present 14. Each of the six states would have no less than one residing director, though appointees would not be permitted to hold any position with a state association.

Directors would be chosen on the basis of their relevant skills, and Crawford and Carter's report suggested that CA's chief executive, currently James Sutherland, should be elevated to assume a director's berth on the board.

The present structure hands the bulk of board authority to the three "foundation" states New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, each with three directors. Queensland and Western Australia have two, and Tasmania one.

Each state will now be required to vote on the measures, and their approval is not a foregone conclusion. In their report, Carter and Crawford noted "a strong, but not unanimous, mood for change throughout Australian cricket".

According to a CA statement, the states will be required to respond to the recommendations ahead of a CA board meeting on February 27, which will "consider any constitutional amendments arising from the collective State Associations' response to today's governance review report and put that amendment to a specially-convened meeting of CA members as soon as possible after that".

Crawford, the chairman of Foster's, and Carter, president of the Geelong AFL club, have a history of advocating governance reform in Australian sport. Crawford was the author of the reports that led to the creation of the AFL Commission and more recently the formation of Football Federation Australia.

More to come...