Cricket Australia head coach Justin Langer. Photo / Photosport
Cricket Australia head coach Justin Langer. Photo / Photosport
One of Australian cricket's longest-serving administrators, Andrew Jones, has launched an attack on Cricket Australia for conducting a cultural review after the ball-tampering scandal.
In an interview with SEN Test Cricket, Jones slammed CA for allowing themselves to be connected to the events at Newlands, which saw lengthy suspensions for disgraced cricketers Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft.
The former CA head of strategy said that he would not have conducted the Longstaff Review which followed the ball-tampering crisis and led to several senior figures losing their jobs.
"If it was me I wouldn't have commissioned the review," Jones said on SEN.
"They managed to get them sucked into a washing machine they didn't need to get sucked into."
The outgoing Cricket NSW chief questioned why former chairman David Peever, who was one of the figures to lose his job in wake of the review, was made accountable for the players' failings and deemed the review's findings as not the whole truth.
Former Australian captain Steve Smith. Photo / Photosport
"David Peever did some good stuff, some stuff he could've done better but he's not saying 'go and sandpaper the ball, boys … how does he end up getting left to carry the can for sandpapering the ball?" he said.
"He's the accountant's accountant, he's as straight as it gets. To imagine he and the organisation he oversaw would in any way suggest or condone ball tampering is fanciful.
"The two things got conflated; that didn't need to be."
In the strident attack, Jones also called for an overhaul of the selection panel and believed that CA should change their model to allow for the coach to have greater control.
Currently, the team is selected by a panel that includes Greg Chappell, Trevor Hohns and coach Justin Langer, but Jones said it was time for CA to clean up their mess and restore confidence in the team.
"If I'm brutally honest I don't really believe in selection panels. In NSW we changed the selection structure when I started to make the coach accountable for the performance of the team and therefore the selection of the team," Jones said.
"I suspect, I don't know this, [that] what we've seen in selection is a camel – a horse designed by committee. You've got multiple people with different views on selection and what they want. The chopping and changing has reflected that at some level.
"The impact of poor selections on players, their psyche and also their lives, financially and psychologically, is quite profound.
"I think the system works well when players have confidence in and think they will get what they deserve. When that confidence is broken then bad things happen."
