New South Wales hold firm on stance against BBL privatisation out of 'biggest fear'

New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland are not ready yet to approve the idea of the privatisation of the Big Bash League (BBL) and have informed Cricket Australia (CA) of the same. The development leaves Cricket Australia in a catch-22 situation. It is estimated that a full privatisation of the BBL could lead to a cash windfall of AU$600-800 million into Cricket Australia's coffers.

As per a report by ESPNcricinfo, Queensland conducted a board meeting on April 14 and have several queries for Cricket Australia before taking a call on the idea of privatisation. However, New South Wales are firmly against the idea of privatisation but want to see the league develop and flourish in the coming years.

"Our position is that we still do not believe that the sale of the BBL clubs is the right approach here," said NSW CEO Lee Germon as reported by ESPNcricinfo. "What I would like to reiterate is that we are in fierce agreement with Cricket Australia that we need to invest in the BBL, that we need to grow the BBL, we need to have our best players play in the BBL and in a window that allows that.

"We believe there's another way of doing that through some self-funding mechanisms and over the last three to four weeks, we've been able to work on that alternative strategy. We shared that with Cricket Australia and the other states yesterday, so we would hope that that now forms a discussion in terms of an alternative strategy."

The New South Wales CEO feels that the influx of external investment can prove to be detrimental to Australia's cricketing ecosystem, interfering with how the sport is governed in the country and how players are produced.

"Our biggest fear is external investment coming into a cricket ecosystem, which is working very effectively and very well now, in terms of adding more voices to how our cricket is run and how our players are produced.

"So we see some risks here, which Cricket Australia share, by the way, I think we all understand this, that one of the risks in bringing that is that you suddenly open up the involvement of external investors who will not have aligned goals with the states or Cricket Australia in terms of how they want the game to be run."