As witnessed during the last Border-Gavaskar Trophy, Cricket Australia has been actively marketing their product to the Indian and Asian communities who live in Australia but what is its new CEO Todd Greenberg’s views on whether the second and third generation Asian-origin fans should support Australia or still clamour for their country of origin?
Or in other words, what’s CA’s take on the old ‘Tebbit Test’ from the 90’s in England. Norman Tebbit, a member of the Conservative party and considered the then UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s blue-eyed boy, had devised a provocative test: “A large proportion of Britain’s Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?” It came to be known as the Tebbit Test, a test of loyalty of British Asians, and created a huge furore whose ramifications are felt to this day.
Greenberg has no confusion about the answer to that test. “It’s an interesting one because I think if you’re second, third, fourth, fifth generation, wherever you come from, if that’s the team that you support, we should encourage you to support that because, ultimately, everyone must come from somewhere, and we should all be really proud of where we come from. And in a country like Australia, with our beautiful multicultural base, we should all be very proud of the different styles, people, genders, races, and religions, and where people come from. And if people choose to support where they came from, we should encourage that,” the CA CEO told reporters on June 3.
“Equally, if someone’s been here and is the next third generation and wants to support the country of which they live, we should be equally supportive of that as well, but we shouldn’t judge people on the decisions we make. We should only make them feel included, proud, and a part of the sport. And that’s the most important part. Cricket must be a sport for all that’s inclusive, and people should feel safe, and they should feel welcome to barrack for whoever and whatever they like. And we should support their choice.”
Later this year, India are set to tour Australia for a one-day series and the CEO reckons it would be great for fans to see Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma for one last time possibly in Australia.
“This might be the last time that we get to see Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma play in our country. And if that is the case, who knows it might not be, but if it is, we wanna make sure we give them a great send off and a reflection of the incredible contribution they’ve made to international cricket.
During Covid pandemic in 2020, it was reported that Cricket Australia had to take a loan of A$300 million from Commonwealth Bank. The Indian series in 2021 helped the Australian board. And in October last year, they announced a deficit of A$31.9 million ($21.34m). The last 2024-25 series against India in Australia further boosted the finances of the CA.
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Greenberg acknowledged India’s role. “With the billions of people in India, it brings scale and global significance to the touring events when they come here.And that’s evidenced by the crowds, it’s evidenced by the ratings, and it’s evidenced by the imagination that it captures both here and abroad. So India are a very important partner, and I get a sense that, and it was before my time, but, you know, those efforts through COVID create relationships between our two countries, between the leadership of our countries to make sure that we are playing each other regularly both here and abroad. When our team tour is India, we know the numbers in their broadcast markets are enormous as well. So they’re a very important partner of ours.”
Tapping the large Indian and Asian-origin fans who live in Australia is one thing, but what about providing the pathway for young Asian-origin kids to play for Australia. Is Australia open enough to do that?
“I agree we’ve still got a lot of work to do, and, we would like to be attracting more of those communities to be playing cricket, but part of that challenge is on us in how we offer participation. I think our participation offerings in this country are very traditional, and they have historically been offered in the same way to the same types of people over generations. And if we’re going to attract a new generation of participants, then we need to do things differently. We need to think differently. We need to communicate differently, and we need to make sure that the clubs and our environments are both safe and welcoming and inclusive,” Greenberg says.
And I know our participation network and the leads of our participation base here in this country are thinking about those things as we speak, and they’re trying to make sure that we have a welcoming and offering that will allow everyone to feel welcome to come and play cricket, whether you’re a boy, girl, male or female, Indian, Pakistani, wherever you’re from, that there’s an opportunity for you to play. So I think there’s a real opportunity for us to do better in that regard.”
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CA also is holding out hope that the BCCI will one day allow Indian players to feature in Australia’s T20 competition BBL.
“That’s certainly some conversations that we will continue to have with the BCCI. I mean, I would love to see, Virat Kohli playing in the BBL this year. That would certainly create some interest in crowds and ratings, I’m sure. But at the moment, that’s not happening, but we do have our ambitions to do those types of things. And as you’re seeing all over the world, t 20 leagues are going down a lot of the private investment opportunities.
We’re seeing that in England recently with the hundred. A number of the IPL franchises are now taking ownership stakes in the hundred. We’ve got to continue to evolve and innovate the way we run our business here in Australia and making sure that we have an open mind to new things. But the short answer to that question is if we could find opportunities for Indian cricketers, either retired, recently retired, or current players to play in the BBL, they’d be very welcome, and it’s a conversation we’ll continue to have,” Greenberg said.