Cricket Australia is one of the oldest and the finest national governing body for the cricketing game in Australia. Australian cricket is under the administration of one national body, two territory association and six state bodies. The rationale of having so many administering bodies is to ensure country wide participation and to connect the sport to local and state levels. The vision for Cricket Australia is to make cricket as the favourite sport for all the Australians and to inspire people to participate and love the engaging sport. Internationally, Cricket Australia was the founding member of the world’s cricket governing body, ICC. Cricket Australia has just recently launched its strategy for the next five years (2017-2022) which encompasses the direction for Cricket across the country. The strategy develop by Cricket Australia is an embodiment for the board and all the eight state and territory cricket associations. The strategy by Cricket Australia is a culmination of the efforts of the volunteers, coaches, club members, players and administrators from across the country (Cricket Australia, 2018a). The strategic report by Cricket Australia is major focussed on 5 major areas:
The case here is based on building capacity or increasing the field force in Australian cricket. The cricket board of Australia along with other local and state bodies are increasing their efforts to sustain or continue with the growth in participation which even includes implementation at the national level for major initiatives such as growing girl’s cricket and junior formats. Additionally, the community or the associations related to volunteers, clubs and schools are looking for leadership and support to engage and retain the participants in the favourite sport of Cricket. In context of the same, the assignment requires to predict or create a model which would ensure that the Australian Cricket has the capacity, capability and the resources to lead, influence and service the cricket community and meet the growing needs of the target audience and sustain its growth strategy.
In order to achieve the required outcome, the report will be neatly structured and divided into three sections; each section will create a base for the following section and will provide a logical solution to the vision of Cricket Australia. The section of the report will be as follows:
Cricket Australia is one of the oldest and most experienced governing bodies of Cricket, which was even the founding member of ICC. Until now, there has been an active participation of over 100,000 volunteers, over 2 Million in attendance in 2016-17, over 23,667 teams and 3,995 clubs. All these numbers imply that Cricket Australia has been able to manage its participation in the sports as well the growth. Another snapshot which would further reconfirm the efforts of Cricket Australia in increasing the participation are that over 1.4 million people participated in the sports, which is a 9% growth in the year 2016-17. The female participant in the sports has gone up by 25%, making the total to reach 393,735, multicultural participants have increased by 28% to reach a number of 241,105 and the indoor participation has reached to a number of 185,015, indigenous participants have increased by 47% to reach at 54,346 participants. These numbers are more than overwhelming and an indication that Cricket Australia is working hard on its strategic goal to build capacity and increase participation. In addition to this, the board is trying out various school formats, junior college format cricket tournament to increase the awareness of the sport from right at the school level and increase their participation (Cricket Australia, 2018d).
As mentioned in the earlier sections, Cricket Australia is one of the oldest and one of the most powerful crickets administering body across the world. The very first central administrative cricket body was established in Australia in the year 1892, wherein the delegation from South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales came together to give Cricket a new life, make it more disciplined and increase the accreditation of the board across the globe. The current CEO of Cricket Australia is James Sutherland who has been in position since the early 2001, and has been doing a great job in taking Cricket in Australia to remote corners and helping increase the participation of players, volunteers and associations with Cricket. It has been the efforts of the Cricket board of Australia which have made sure that the participation of female in the sports have grown by huge numbers. Also, due to the initiative of Cricket Australia, the board has decided to give the same treatment, respect and accreditation to both the male and the female cricketing teams in Australia. In terms of gender inclusion, Cricket in Australia encompass for better diversity inclusion, less gap in pay and gender equity at all levels(Cricket Australia, 2018b).
Not only empowering the players, Cricket Australia is investing heavily in grassroots cricket which is extremely beneficial for the health of the game. Cricket Australia has taken the onus and responsibility on its shoulders with the support of the state and territory associations to provide for better supports to the local clubs, school and associations and provide them with the resources and the facilities to keep the sport alive in Australia. Thus, it can be said that the strategic initiatives are well aligned with the on -going strategy of cricket Australia and the board is providing all means and resources to allow for more and more participation in the sport from every corner of Australia.
The current strategy of Cricket Australia which is also in sync with the increasing participation in the sport can be summarized as:
(Source: Australia Cricket, 2018c)
In order to achieve the above mentioned strategy, Cricket Australia will achieve so by:
Assessment of the success of Cricket in Australia can be seen by the following figures:
All these figures clearly reveal the success the Board of Cricket Australia has achieved in the recent years due to its extensive effort in uniting the country with the sport. The board has been able to implement program to increase the participation in the sport and build capacity on the field.
SWOT analysis is a micro environmental analysis which helps in identifying the Strength and weakness which are internal to the organization and take in account the opportunities and threats which are external to the organization.
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Strength
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Weakness
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Opportunity
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Threats
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The table below will provide description of the Structure, Culture and Leadership of Cricket Australia.
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Pointers |
Description |
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Structure- The structure of Cricket Board in Australia. |
The board consist of 9 independent directors who work collectively for the national interest of the Australian Cricket. The board is Chaired by David Peever and other directors are Earl Eddings, Tony Harrison, Michael Kasprowicz, Mark Taylor and others (Cricket Australia, 2018b). |
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Culture-The culture imbibed and followed by the board |
The culture at Cricket Australia is to lead, nurture, encourage participation and contribute in the growth and development of the sports whilst increasing the participation on and off the field. The culture also speaks in volume of gender diversity and inclusion at the field and the board (Cricket Australia, 2018g). |
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Leadership-The CEO of CA |
CEO James Sutherland, who along with his trusted staff has maintained a clear focus on the game and have signed various MOU’s , trialled new junior formats and improving the infrastructure of facilities provided to the volunteer and the sports persons(Cricket Australia, 2018f) |
(Source: Cricket Australia, 2018g)
SWOT analysis model discussed in the above section is one of the most important tools to understand and analyse the strategic direction of Cricket Board of Australia. Everything in the strategic direction of CA looks great, because the board has already accounted for the steps they need to take and have also worked on risk mitigation policy to stop itself from falling into a pitfall. Some of the heads, under which the strategy can be analysed, are:
Cricket Australia is one of the richest and most experienced boards of cricket, and it is also the founding member for the board of ICC. The industry can be seen as monopoly as all the decisions are taken by the central governing organization of Cricket Australia, while state and territory association ably support the board in its strategic initiative and implementing the plan across Australia. Globally, BCCI is the richest board and has dominated the world sports leading to its team performance, huge population, growth of IPL and development of the sport in the Indian sub-continent. However, in Australia, the board does not seem to face any challenge due to highly monopolistic competition. Hence, the board is able to work with a focussed approach towards its initiative of building capacity in the workforce and volunteers off the field and ensuring increase in the women participation from all fronts (Ingram & Boyle, 2018).
Cricket Australia (CA) formerly known as Australian Cricket Board (ACB) is the official governing body for the professional cricket in Australia. Cricket Australia was formed in 1905 as ‘Australian Board of Control for International Cricket’ which was then incorporated as a private company. This body is responsible for handling all the operations of International Cricket Team (male and female) along with identifying young talent for sustainable growth and development. Cricket fever has been increased rapidly in past few decades and with regards to this, the standard of international cricket has also been increased. This body is responsible for organising and holding test tours, one day international as well as twenty-twenty matches. With regards to their operations, Cricket Australia has acquired reputed and valuable position in the top three cricket boards across the globe with approximately net worth of $99 million in 2015 (Cricket Australia, 2018a).
(Source: Cricket Australia, 2018c)
Objective of Cricket Australia is to adopt appropriate and relevant strategies and approaches through which sustainable growth and development related objectives could be attained. Along with uplifting the standard of International Cricket in both male and female category, it is required for the regulatory body to ensure regular participation in the cricket along with generating interest amongst the Aussies for enhancing customer base. It is required for the board to take initiatives for encouraging Junior Formats, girl’s cricket at both domestic as well as international level to creating demand. Although, international cricket team of Australia have always been into dark sides due to numerous incidents. One of the recent incidents has declined the goodwill of Australian Cricket Team under which both the leaders of the international cricket team i.e. Captain Steve Smith and Vice-Captain David Warner were found the major contributors of ball tempering incident. In order to gain short term goals by winning a match, they neglected the long term outcomes of such cheap incident (Faulkner, 2016).
Although, Cricket Australia announced immediate investigation so that quick decisions could be taken. With the due respect to the standards of International Cricket Association, board of directors of the Cricket Australia decided to impose ban for one year on the captain, vice-captain as well as on the bowler who actually tempered the ball under the supervision of leaders of the team. With regards to this incident, reputation of the whole cricket team gets declined and at international level, Cricket Australia was not able to justify the practice done by their star players. With regards to this, Australian Cricket has launched five year strategy (2017-2022) in order to provide a clear direction for the sport ground in the country. Vision of the body is to create awareness amongst the Aussies for cricket and to develop cricket a favourite sport in the country. Their strategic plan covers all eight states and different territory cricket associations. The first initiative of this strategic plan includes collaboration of 12 months with volunteers of different crickets clubs, club members, coaches to the players and administrators (Lemon, 2017).
With regards to the industry analysis, Porter’s five forces will help the Cricket Australia to determine its position in the global cricket industry through which relevant strategies and models could be recommended to the body for accomplishing its desired goals related to approaching to the volunteers and for generating cricket love amongst the Aussies (Featherstone, 2018).
Threat of Substitutes: This is one of the major components of industry analysis which helps to analyse all the major and relevant substitutes for the particular aspect. In this scenario, Australia is known as a sport loving nation and their culture consist of a big part of sport. Along with Cricket, football, rugby, soccer, horse racing are the favourite sports which are played in Australia and they are also meant to be big players in these sport categories. Thus, these are the major substitutes for cricket in Australia and in order to encourage Aussies towards cricket, the regulatory board requires to adopt integration of various promotional and advertisement strategies (Duke, 2018).
Threat of New entrants: As Australia is a sport loving nation and their culture signifies Aussies’ ambition towards different sports. Currently, Australia holds numerous professional sport leagues such as Australian Football League (AFL), AFL Women’s, Big Bash league, National Rugby League, Women’s National Basketball League, Super Rugby, Australian Baseball League, etc. With regards to this, Cricket Australia (CA) is required to promote their cricket leagues at national and international level along with introducing new championships and leagues for attracting volunteers from the different parts of the globe along with accomplishing its desire goals and objectives (Cricket Network, 2017).
Buyer’s power: As CA is approaching to the Aussies for emerging the interest for cricket along with approaching volunteers at different level so that demand for cricket could be originated. Although, Australia hosts numerous other sports which dilute the significance of cricket but with the help of effective promotional campaigns, regulatory body of the Cricket in Australia could be able to generate appropriate demand amongst their target audience.
Supplier’s power: Cricket Australia has sufficient resources in terms of financial as well as human through which players, volunteers as well as the other staff could be offered with appropriate facilities. This is essential because satisfaction of needs is important in order to retain all the people attached to it.
Industry Rivalry: According to National Cricket Census released by Cricket Australia (CA), participation in cricket has been grown at 9% to more than 1.4 million players in the Australian in 2016-17. Amongst these 1.4 million players, approximately more than 27% players were female and now, more than 400,000 female are playing cricket which is a hike of 80,000 from the previous year. This shows that growth of Cricket Australia is above average but still, Cricket Australia is not able to accomplish their desired goals for generating passion amongst the existing players along with increasing popularity and volunteers for cricket in Australia (Rotten Brinjal, 2018).
Cricket Australia’s major competitors are present at both national as well as international level. National competitions are Matador BBQs One-Day Cup, Sheffield Shield and Women’s National Cricket League. Club competitions are Big Bash League and Women’s Big Bash League and International competition for Cricket in Australia are Cricket World Cup, ICC World Twenty20, ICC Champions Trophy, Women’s Cricket World Cup and Under-19 Cricket World Cup. It is necessary for the Cricket Australia to move towards some unique and creative strategies for the objective of enhancing its position in the world cricket industry along with retaining its current position.
Cricket Australia (CA) used to stand on the third position in terms of net worth amongst the all cricket boards in the world in 2015 but as of now, CA stands on the 7th place with net income of $24 million. With regards to the improving cricket’s position in the globe, it is required for the regulatory authority to take necessary steps for promoting the crickets championships at different through numerous marketing and promotional mediums (Vickery, et. al., 2018).
It is required for the Cricket Australia to organise various championships of Cricket at international and national level to promote cricket in Australia. Cricket in Australia requires both supports from civilians as well as from the players and volunteers. Primarily CA will adopt effective integration of both traditional and non-traditional forms of promotional mediums. Along with this, CA will also outsource certain functionalities to the Asian countries as these countries carry a huge fan base for cricket through which their revenues and income is also high in comparison to other cricket boards. This will help the organization to regain its lost position in the top three cricket boards in the world along with originating opportunities for attaining competitive advantage in the target market (Sacheti, Gregory-Smith & Paton, 2014).
As such as Australian Cricket does not faces much issues rather than the behavioural issues of their cricketers. Australian cricket team is meant to be more into sledging other teams’ players on the ground along with following various other unethical practices. This has decreased the value of CA in the globe and such incidents have also affected the demand for cricket amongst the Aussies.
While formulating strategies for encouraging cricket in the Aussies along with gaining competitive advantage, appropriate rules, regulations and standards issued by ICC will be considered in an appropriate manner through which cricket could be promoted in the Australia through which desired goals and objectives could be attained. Promotional strategies will be implemented as per the time frame designed in the five year strategy plan made for 2017-2022 (Frost, et. al., 2016).
Cricket Australia (CA) is required to search for an effective leader and a coach for the international cricket team who could inspire the other players to play with spirit, moral values and along with ethical behavioural practices. Australian Cricket team is not considered as the ethical team through which standard of the team is declining and in order to promote the cricket in Australia along with accomplishing the desired goals. With regards to resolving challenges in terms of culture, team’s performance, plans developed by the outsourcing partners will be implemented (Weerakkody & Allen, 2017).
The strategic issue in the case here is related to building capacity and the field force. Subsequently, it also calls for aspirational strategy of Cricket Australia to increase the participation in the sport, taking initiatives such as junior formats and the growing girl’s cricket. At the very same time volunteer association, schools and colleges are looking for leadership support to engage and retain the participation in the sport. A set of recommendation here will help in overcoming the strategic issue faced by Cricket Australia:
Australian activities in the early period of time was based on uplifting the spirit of game, being the number team in the world, making it count across all the formats. This strategy has to be tweaked now to better accommodate the participation into the sport. In order to do so, Australian Cricket has come up with a new strategy of “How we play cricket” in Australia and bring ever stakeholder in the same page. The board has already accounted for gender pay equity across the board and also in the sport. Additionally, the board is coming up with new and innovative grassroots apps to build engagement with the audience and make it more interactive. These grassroots apps can easily be a big help for Cricket Australia as the digital literacy rate in Australia is over 80%, therefore creating an ensemble audience of School going kids, College going adults and other volunteers and associations. Thus, aligning the board to work for the new strategy will help in building a good capacity and a field force on the field (Sharpe, Beaton & Scott, 2018).
Cricket Australia in order to make its dream truly realize in reality and to improve the facilities and the infrastructural requirement has already gotten into new funding agreements for development of the sport and building awareness across states and territories. The board is also working efficiently towards collecting resources and resourcing some of its activities for its grassroots cricket to develop the sport at the small level. Australia board is also utilizing the growth in technology to provide better and digitally engaging experience to the cricket community across Australia. At the same time, training camps have been opened up in various states of Australia to increase the participation in the sport (Drew & Gottschall, 2018).
October to March is the season when Australians line up to their TV sets or in the ticket line to watch Cricket. Thus, the board has to ensure that it creates a schedule which is compelling and entertaining for the fans. The season should be filled with different formats of game such as Test Cricket, ODI, T20 ad Big Bash to cater to different audience. Providing and distributing fan based content for the fans and creating an experience for them while they are watching the sport (Gemmell & Gemmell, 2018).
Cricket in every school of Australia is a big trusted partner for the education sector and inspires children to have perpetual love for the sport. Creating and developing fun formats game with quality to excite and delight the children in Cricket. It is also important to create multiple clubs for the fans and encompassing engaging activities and safe place for children. The Grassroots cricket program of Cricket Australia welcomes people from different communities, tribes and encompass for growing diversity in Australia. Creating a feeling of compassion amongst the population with subtle branding exercise and promotion of sport through both traditional and web 2.0 channels of marketing (Ranjan, 2016).
Cricket in the present day has become modern, progressive and positive, thus it becomes easier for the board to promote the game and urge for increased participation. Initiatives such as trial runs in schools and junior colleges call for better participation of Children and adults and make them accustom to the real situations on and off the field. This has to be done by creating a narrative around cricket by storytelling on social media channels and blogs to engage the growing online audience (Astle, Leberman & Watson, 2018).
As mentioned in the report earlier that Schools, colleges and volunteers require for greater support and leadership direction from Cricket Australia. This is a harbinger of interesting times for development of Cricket in Australia. The need of the hour is to create separate teams and format of game for school, colleges and volunteer association to prepare them for all the formats. Additionally, volunteers have an important role to play on and off the field, thus developing and creating training camps to make them better envision the scenario at hand will help in increasing their focussed participation towards the sport (Fairley & O’Brien, 2018).
Over 400 people across Australia have gathered up to create and develop a shared set of behaviours for the population of Australia in the context of Cricket. In the similar way, Cricket Australia has to take some initiatives in clearly communicating its vision for Cricket in Australia for the future. This should encompass discussion on topics such as showing respect while on the field, be innovative and comfortable and challenge the status quo and come across as stronger by being together. Hence, it can be said that if all the bodies, may it be state, territory, national body, Cricket Australia have to come together and approach the strategic issue together, and combat every obstacle in its path of success(Jeanes et. al., 2018).
Conclusion
It has been advised that Cricket Australia uses a progressive model to set strategic goals for 5 years, creating an action plan to achieve the goals, creating implementation policy for the goals and lastly evaluation and monitoring of progress of the goal to be completed. Cricket Australia has set an aspiration to build capacity on the field and adopt various innovative practices for the development of sport, nurturing the sport and improving infrastructural facilities for participants and the volunteers. In order to do so, the governing body of Cricket Australia along with the support of its leadership, state and territory body is approaching schools and colleges to empower and inspire children and adult to engage and participate in the sport and make Cricket as the favourite sport of Australia.
References
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