“That’s what his background is. He’s a lovely guy, don’t get me wrong. But he now runs the whole of cricket. He can’t tell [Australian coach] Andrew McDonald or [captain] Steve Smith what to do.
“[Ben Oliver] runs high-performance cricket, but I’m not really sure what he does now.
Cricket Australia boss chief Todd Greenberg.Credit: Janie Barrett
“Then you have George, who is the chairman of selectors. Does he have the gravitas or the leadership skills to tell Andrew McDonald and Steve Smith or Pat Cummins what to do? He should do, 100 per cent, but I don’t think he does.”
Speaking during the middle session on day three, Greenberg said the remarks were unnecessary and that he wanted to publicly defend Bailey, Allsopp and Cricket Australia’s high-performance team.
“Those comments I thought were out of order,” Greenberg said. “When I see criticism of him [Allsopp], I think it touches on the personal criticism. I thought that was unwarranted.
“It was made very clear to me that they were not comments attributed to Cricket NSW. They were comments attributed to Stuart personally.
Australia’s head selector George Bailey. Credit: Getty Images
“I’m not going to get into a war of words with Stuart because I’ve got very high regard for him, but when I think that someone’s got it wrong, I’ll say it.”
Greenberg said he raised the issue directly with Clark, noting his position of influence within the game.
“On this occasion, I thought he overstepped the mark by talking not just about the decisions, but individually about people,” Greenberg said. “I thought that was personal. I said that to him.”
Asked how the exchange played out, Greenberg, a former NRL chief executive, said: “That’s up to Stuart [to elaborate on]. I said, ‘I don’t want to get into days and days of us going at each other’. But even when mates or friends or contacts get it wrong, I’m going to tell him. I’ve dealt with much bigger ones than this one, so it’s not the end of the world.
Australian coach Andrew McDonald. Credit: Getty Images
“What I’m keen to put on record is the quality of the people that are making key decisions in high performance and selection and the outcomes of those.
“We’re the No.1 ranked Test team. We won the 2023 World Test Championship and made the final the next cycle. We’ve got a 70 per cent win rate in the last four years under this crew. We hold all bilateral series trophies.
“I can go on and on about some of that stuff … because I think the performances are unequivocal.”
Bailey has also come under fire from former Australian spinner Stuart MacGill, who said the decision not to pick a specialist spinner for the SCG Test should trigger a full-scale review.
Allsopp, a former first-grade wicketkeeper and NSW under-19 representative, was chief executive of Cricket ACT before joining CA.
“When I came, [CA chairman] Mike Baird said to me he had worked with James … and he thought in all of his work in politics, in commercial, he hadn’t seen too many better leaders than someone like James, which is why he’s leading cricket,” Greenberg said. “He runs cricket from top to bottom, participation to elite.”
Greenberg said criticism would be understandable if Australia were not winning, but said he had complete faith in Bailey, McDonald and the wider team.
Loading
“At the start of this summer, what did we want to do? We wanted to win the Ashes and we’ve done that,” Greenberg said. “We’ve done that in the shadow of our captain and fast bowler [Pat Cummins] playing one Test, the adversity of not having Josh Hazlewood, the adversity of not having Nathan Lyon, losing our opening batsman in the first game and having to reshuffle the order.
“We’ve lost four out of five tosses, and we sit here today on the precipice, hopefully, of winning 4-1.
“I want the people who are making a lot of these decisions and who are copping some criticism to feel like the congratulations of Australian cricket. There are moments where we have to stand up straight.”