Updated October 29, 2018 19:09:22

Photo: Cricket Australia chairman David Peever at a press conference on Monday. (AAP: Penny Stephens)

It's not the first recommendation in the long-awaited Ethics Centre review into cricket's culture — but it is the most pressing.

To paraphrase, it says "get your act together" and it gives them a month to do it.

Recommendation 6 states: "CA and the Cricketers' Association, within a period of 30 days, commence a process by which they establish a constructive working relationship".

It is also says the process may require the "assistance of a mediator, involve preliminary confidence-building measures" and requires both sides to "ensure that their representatives be committed to and capable of moving the relationship to a positive setting".

What is evident from the 145-page review is that the board of Cricket Australia and its senior executives sit at polar opposites to those who play the game. And until that vital relationship is fixed, cricket in Australia will not heal.

A marriage gone bad

After acrimonious MOU negotiations in 2017 that saw the players strike, and Cricket Australia essentially retreat from all of its demands, followed by the deliberate cheating of the team in South Africa earlier this year, cricket in Australia resembles a marriage gone bad — irreconcilable differences, you might say.

The Ethics Centre made 41 recommendations in the wake of the ball-tampering scandal. Here are five of the key recommendations and how Cricket Australia responded.

On the whole the players' "extremely negative" view of Cricket Australia is only matched by the board's positive view of itself.

Cricket Australia chairman David Peever said the Ethics Centre review was "at times difficult to read and in some instances, difficult to agree with what has been implied".

It seems the report's findings are viewed by the CA board as its opinions and perceptions, not a reality check.

"It's difficult because it is confronting, and it's difficult because we mightn't have believed that and whether it is reality, or whether it's perception, what's important is that we take the sentiments and we use them to make the game better," Mr Peever said.

'Winning without counting the costs'

What is apparent is that the way the current relationship between CA and its players works is untenable.

After Don Bradman said playing cricket was a moral lesson, and Allan Border demanded toughness but also integrity, when did things turn toxic?

Cricket has become a commodity, a business, where only numbers matter, and the human element — ethics, morals and personal values — has diminished to the point of hardly being recognised.

Cricket Australia did not deliberately set out to get to this position but, the Ethics Centre report suggests, it was a foreseeable consequence of the way the governing body has gone about making the success of the men's team the measure of its reputational standing.

"There is no evidence to suggest deliberate omission," the report states.

"Instead, the ethical dimension seems to have been merely overlooked as irrelevant to the pursuit of enhanced performance."

It's not a "win at all costs attitude" but it's about "winning without counting the costs".

Photo: Steve Smith and David Warner during a Test in Bangladesh last year. (AP: AM Ahad)

Top players with poor behaviour

Nor does it look good when Australia's most decorated players in 2017 and 2018 are also those most guilty of international code of conduct infringements.

Dave Warner and Steve Smith top the list of international players charged with code violations.

Australian cricket team captain Steve Smith and senior players planned the ball-tampering plot during a lunch break. This is how it played out.

At the same time they are the most recognised at the Allan Border Medal and Player of the Year awards.

This has not gone unnoticed by many who contributed to the review, expressing "regret" that elite male players are not held to account for their poor behaviour.

The lack of appropriate sanctions was viewed as a "consistent failure" on the part of Cricket Australia.

Leaving turbulent waters

The most common description of CA from stakeholders was "arrogant" and "controlling", viewed as a body that doesn't hold itself to the same standards it, on paper at least, demands of its players.

If Recommendation 6 is the most pressing from the Ethics Centre report, perhaps this observation is the most pertinent:

"In the relentless pursuit of excellent cricketers, CA appears to have failed to introduce measures to help their people become excellent leaders and decision-makers."

That, in its entirety, is the responsibility of Cricket Australia's board and the organisation's most senior executives.

Time will tell whether CA's board, under the continuing chairmanship of David Peever, is capable of deviating from the very course it charted into these turbulent waters.

Topics: cricket, sport, australia

First posted October 29, 2018 17:34:46