Cricket Australia has today released its organisational review, entitled 'A matter of Balance' in response to the ball-tampering scandal that occurred in March this year.
The review summarised the opinions of 469 people and offered 34 recommendations which were accepted by Cricket Australia, suggesting Australian cricket had "lost its balance... and has stumbled badly".
Eight recommendations were not implemented by CA.
"The reputation of the game of cricket, as played by men, has been tainted. Women’s cricket remains unaffected," the report said.
"Some of cricket’s challenges are due to structural problems (accumulations of power in too few hands). Some are the unintended effects of good intentions without ethical restraint. In such cases, there is no need for blame or punishment. What is needed is principled leadership and the acceptance of responsibility."
"The evidence suggests that Newlands was not an aberration – a cultural ‘outlier’. Rather, it is an extreme example of a latent tendency growing out of the prevailing culture of men’s cricket in Australia – especially (but not exclusively) at the elite level," the report said.
"As it happens, this fits with the opinions of keen observers of Australian cricket who report, with considerable regret (and perhaps the benefit of hindsight), that the events in Newlands were ‘disappointing but not surprising’."
The report also suggested that Cricket Australia was an organisation where people struggled to say no to those in positions of power.
Using the ball-tampering incident as evidence a senior administrator said "(Bancroft) should have said no, but he had no foundation on which to say no whatsoever."
A notable accepted recommendation by CA was for individual awards such as the Allan Border Medal to take into account players' on-field behaviour, as well as performance.
"Over recent years, David Warner and Steve Smith have attracted the highest number of Code of Conduct breaches for international matches. However in the last two years, both men have been honoured – suggesting poor behaviour is not considered to be linked to the concept of poor performance."
