Looked at any way, how can the collective – whose raison d'etre derives entirely from the affection and loyalty of the Australian public – put on such a shabby show? It does seem that cricket, among Australian sports, excels in these displays of self-indulgent civil war. The detached might observe that it bears some connection to the privilege the game offers its elite. Many players, on the other hand, ascribe it to what they see as the sport's ability to produce inept administrators. Hard-liners are inclined to believe every administrator who ever entered the portals of Cricket Australia was/is a dill. If it wasn't the case before the automatic doors opened, the moment they closed behind a new administrator, said person metamorphosed into a blithering idiot. In reality, though, it might be the attempt to raise the standard at the board table that has precipitated the current stoush. For the composition of cricket's governing board was altered five years ago. The old-style committee – composed entirely of state delegates – was adjudged to have had its day. There was broad acceptance and enthusiasm at cricket emulating administrations like the AFL by bringing hard-nosed corporate wherewithal to the table. Now there's a mix of business and cricket. The board chairman, David Peever, is a one-time CEO of mining company, Rio Tinto, who also brings the pedigree of a first-grade cricket career in Brisbane. As the players have found, street-wise corporate administrators don't necessarily provide one-way traffic. Even for stars as prominent and popular as Australia's cricketers.

Brought in to advise the Australian Cricketers' Association, former ACTU secretary and Labor government minister, Greg Combet, recently described Peever as behaving "in true Rio Tinto fashion". It wasn't intended as a compliment. Peever is clearly at the pointy end of Cricket Australia's determined resistance to the players' demands. By the by, it's interesting to see what happens when corporates come to sport. When football first constituted an independent commission, a bunch of free-market types arrived at the board table to re-invent the erstwhile VFL. What they delivered, with great success, was what became known as football socialism. In other words, equalisation was okay in sports administration, just so long as it didn't spill too far over into real life! Now, Combet is for the millionaires and $200K blue-collar workers, while David Peever is trying to rein them in. Perhaps, though, there's something more fundamental to the current fight than a battle over this particular percentage for the players or that financial contingency for the good of the grassroots game. In a nutshell, it's the matter of trust. When one party feels threatened with the loss of a valued industrial condition, clearly trust is crucial.

Even in good times, Australian cricketers betray an innate lack of trust in those who administer their game. The ACA, since its formation, has been the voice of such suspicion. Bear in mind, though, that the celebrated seminal moment in the history of Australian cricketers seeking a better deal occurred when the players negotiated secretly with a private entrepreneur forty years ago. Trust cuts both ways. Twenty years later, the next generation rattled the cage openly and eventually came away with a fixed percentage of revenue. Now, two more decades on, they've been told it's no longer in the game's interests that this arrangement be maintained. This surely is a make-or-break moment for both sides. In the past, cricket administrators have rolled over when push has come to shove. They caved in after two years of World Series Cricket and offered the percentage revenue model to resolve the 1997-98 dispute. Cricket Australia is dealing with popular national figures and knows it can't afford to use denigration as a weapon. In that respect, it's an unfair fight. The players' association has rarely been guilty of such niceties. That the players are aggrieved at losing their guaranteed share of revenue is understandable, but it's an insurmountable stumbling block only if trust is in short supply. Given that those board members who have recently come from the corporate sector bring no obvious cause for lack of faith, it's reasonable to ask whether the players' suspicion is born more of fact or folklore.

If Cricket Australia, on the other hand, is to use public opinion to its advantage it must find a more effective way of communicating its case. If it was OK to operate with roughly 75 per cent of a small cake for 20 years, why isn't it OK to function with roughly 75 per cent of a much bigger cake now? If that can be simply and effectively explained, the administration stands a chance. Its only other chance of winning this game is by brute force. That would cause immense, perhaps irreparable, damage to the game in this country.