Cricket Australia have sensationally banned ABC from speaking to players during the Ashes following a rant from one of their commentators. Stuart Clark, a former player and Cricket NSW board member, launched a scathing attack on Australia’s senior leadership group during the fifth Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground. He didn’t mince his words as he suggested that chief selector George Bailey and chief of cricket James Allsopp were afraid to stand up to Aussie coaches and captains on key decisions.
Speaking live on ABC, Clark said: “James Allsopp who runs cricket in Australia, the head of cricket, community cricket, is a grade club cricket coach that throws underarm balls to kids. That’s what his background is. He’s a lovely guy, don’t get me wrong. But he now runs the whole of cricket. He can’t tell [coach] Andrew McDonald or [captain] Steve Smith what to do.
“[Ben Oliver] runs high-performance cricket, but I’m not really sure what he does now. Then you have George [Bailey], who is the chairman of selectors.
“Does he have the gravitas or the leadership skills to tell Andrew McDonald and Steve Smith or Pat Cummins what to do? He should do, 100 per cent, but I don’t think he does.”
Predictably, those comments went down like a lead balloon with Cricket Australia. Chief executive Todd Greenberg suggested that Clark’s rant was ‘out of order’ and accused him of launching a ‘personal’ attack on Allsopp and Bailey.
“When I see criticism of him [Allsopp], I think it touches on personal criticism. I thought that was unwarranted,” said Greenberg.
“It was made very clear to me that they were not comments attributed to Cricket NSW. They were comments attributed to Stuart personally.
“I’m not going to get into a war of words with Stuart because I’ve got very high regard for him, but when I think that someone’s got it wrong, I’ll say it.
“On this occasion, I thought he overstepped the mark by talking not just about the decisions, but individually about people. I thought that was personal. I said that to him.”
Broadcasters do not have a contractual obligation to speak to players after stumps each day, but Cricket Australia usually works to maintain relationships by asking certain players to take part in interviews.
Clark later opened up on his chat with Greenberg after he was sought out for clear-the-air talks, insisting there was no bad blood between them.
“Look, I’m not going to get into a public spat with Todd,” he said on ABC Radio. “I’ve known Todd for 20-odd years. We’ve worked together at the NRL. He was at National Rugby League, I was at New South Wales Rugby League.
“We’re friends. We’ve played golf together. We’ve done all of that. We’ll have disagreements. We’ll continue to have disagreements. We obviously don’t agree, but that’s cool.
“He’s got respect for me. He’s run national organisations, and he’s now in charge of cricket in Australia. From my point of view, I’ll probably see him later on this evening. We’re all going to a function and we’ll probably have a laugh about it.”