There are a few ways to handle embarrassment. One is to own the problem, then fix or laugh it off. Another is to deflect blame. The last is to plough on and pretend it never happened. The latter is Cricket Australia's choice, after a year that has been beyond embarrassing.

Not because of a lost Test in Bangladesh or a few games in India.

This is about a shambolic parade issuing from head office; the Springfield Tyre Fire of sports administration.

It's about the pay dispute between players and the board, how it was mishandled, and the lack of repercussions for anyone involved.

Cricket Australia has instead struck a jaunty tone since, with volleys of press releases about participation numbers, development squads, and wacky japes as chief executive James Sutherland dug out board shorts and giant bats on a national goodwill tour.

Today's AGM is a forum that could press those responsible, but Ashes hype will soon smother all else.

It's Cricket Australia's fondest hope: let cricket's spring distract from the civil war launched in an impulsive autumn foray.

But with the smoke well clear, we can assess the winter wreckage.

Out of contract: Usman Khawaja, Clea Smith, Australian Cricketers Association boss Alistair Nicholson and Shane Watson after the ACA Emergency Executive meeting in Sydney July 2. ( AAP: Paul Miller )

In the eventual peace deal, bureaucrats came home without a single prize they tried to win. The bonuses to be withheld? Disbursed. The revenue-sharing pay structure? Retained. Threats made in pursuit of these ends? Walked back one by one. Unemployed on July 1? Players blew past without flinching. No wages from the interim? Back-paid in full. Sacked for rival sponsorships? It's fine, enjoy the Audi.

Even union funding, which Cricket Australia claims to have ended, remains under a different name.

It's just a shame accord was reached before players could stage exhibition matches, given the threat to suspend them for that too.

A one-sided dispute

Throughout, news outlets portrayed the situation as a dispute.

On one side, more than 200 professional cricketers, domestic and international, represented by the Australian Cricketers Association, wanting to renew their existing deal and include female players.

On the other, administrators wanting to change that pay structure and divert savings to grassroots funding. CA and the ACA, a pair of anodyne acronyms in a bloodless tussle.

Except the dispute was one-sided. Rather than present new demands, players only refused one made of them.

For 20 years they had been co-owners of the game: as its main profit driver, they got a quarter of revenue.

Abruptly they were told that all but the internationals should be paid flat salaries, changing from partners to employees.

Likewise, Cricket Australia's concern for grassroots cricket was presented uncritically rather than as the instigator's PR.

Reporters swallowed the line, as well as the hook and the sinker.

At its heart the issue was about power and control, not number of dollars but authority to spend them.

Underfunded clubs are great cover, the sport version of "Think of the children!"

But the argument was less grass and more fertiliser.

Pay model in its sights

From late 2016 through to a contract offer in April, the dominant line was that the pay model was outdated and must be replaced.

Players were told, not asked, though insistence makes a poor substitute for argument. An antagonistic tone was set.

Only with June's ICC tournaments and July's contract expiries uncomfortably close did we start hearing of grassroots in detail. This was a crisis, we were told.

Other sports were stealing talent, clubs were failing, infrastructure crumbling, overworked volunteers holding it together with tape.

It's true enough — club stalwarts need little invitation to name their struggles.

But that didn't make it Cricket Australia's driver.

Urgency and emergency are ready whetstones for those with an axe to grind.

If there were a crisis, how had it just been detected? As former Test batsman Simon Katich noted, $1.9 billion over five years didn't leave room to dodge.

"You can't tell us there is not enough to fund grassroots. The money is there, it's just being spent on other things." Or not spent — in this emergency, a $70 million cash reserve remained untouched.

Then there was Cricket Australia's indifference to solutions.

If the aim was to save money, the sharing model could have been adapted rather than abandoned. Income streams could be excluded, percentages trimmed, sliding scales employed. That's what negotiations are for.

When players proposed a grassroots fund from their own pay, it was hardly seized upon with delight.

Eliminating revenue sharing came first, second, and third.

Campaign had a slow start

Sent to achieve this was Cricket Australia's executive general manager, Kevin Roberts, a man positioned as Sutherland's successor for the top job.

In months, negotiations barely began, Cricket Australia insisting their new pay structure be accepted as a starting point. The campaign drowned in press releases, scolding the union for a range of things including sending too many press releases.

Kevin Roberts appears in a Cricket Australia explainer video about the pay dispute. ( Cricket Australia )

The lowest point came in May, with a video missive addressed to players but released publicly in a passive aggressive reply all.

Hanging at the nets in a Cricket Australia polo, as if to show he was just one of the guys, Roberts channelled his best Troy McClure as he woodenly faced the lens, rehashing arguments.

"Some players have asked how CA's proposal differs from the current revenue-sharing model," came his stand-out line, intoned like a Presbyterian minister at an especially dull funeral. "The short answer is not very much."

Leaving, of course, the question of why it was worth such a brawl.

Cricket Australia's campaign looked like the Baskin-Robbins of bulldust — 31 flavours and as many samples as you like.

Wage averages were inflated by including foreign Big Bash stars. Statements demanded "flexibility" when they meant compliance. Mediation was repeatedly refused.

Cricket Australia "praised the efforts of the Australian Women's Cricket Team" at the World Cup, having left them unemployed the day it ended.

Talks were suspended before Boxing Day with the claim they were a distraction, but players received contract proposals before an April Test decider in India, and were lobbied throughout the Champions Trophy mid-year.

Their repeated requests for everything to go through their union were ignored.

Vice-captain David Warner publicly reprimanded the distractions, and Australia was knocked out of the Trophy days later.

Women who had recently left other work to turn professional were suddenly without income, losing meagre retainers worth $18,000 to $40,000 a year.

At the same time, Cricket Australia used them for good publicity from a huge proposed pay rise, dangling the numbers in front of anyone who would sign. Remarkably, none broke ranks.

"It is unfortunate that the ACA's hard line and inflexible position has not been conducive to delivering any positive outcomes or certainty for players," said the organisation refusing to pay them, "and this may place significant financial and emotional strain on them and their families."

It was classic gaslighting: I'm really disappointed that you made me lock you in the cellar.

Steve Smith campaigned alongside his teammates against Cricket Australia's pay proposal. ( Reuters: Adnan Abidi )

Splitting the top players

Sutherland chipped in occasionally, including an opinion piece amplifying the line that cricketers were "starving other vital parts of the game".

It painted them as greedy and damaging, the red carpet versus the suburbs.

Michael Slater led the chorus that the honour of selection should be so dazzling as to prevent them even reading their contracts. Others pasted them as selfish millionaires.

That was blankly unfair, given the richest could have got richer by backing management. Cricket Australia fixer Pat Howard emailed top players to say: "Yes, we are trying to put a lid on big increases to state cricket … I don't apologise for putting international players ahead of domestic."

He tried to split five of the biggest names from their colleagues with lucrative long-term deals.

Howard misjudged his targets, who see domestic cricket as part of their ecosystem. From dust you rose and to dust you will return: the same goes for the Sheffield Shield.

Warner, Steve Smith, Mitch Starc and Pat Cummins only campaigned more actively after Howard's approach, and Cricket Australia lost all chance of getting them onside.

David Warner. ( AP: AM Ahad )

Warner gave the best summary: "We want to make sure that the female players and domestic players are in this revenue-share model. Through the decades gone past, the past players in our situation stood up for us. I was a domestic player, I was a young kid coming through. We're doing the same that they did."

Where Cricket Australia allowed dislike to flourish, it now has to rehabilitate its players as lovable Aussie heroes deserving of an entry fee and a day off work.

Because suddenly, after the fire and the fury, all went quiet.

In August, with players having been unemployed a month, a cliff loomed far more perilous than expiring contracts. Tests in Bangladesh, ODIs in India, the Sheffield Shield, Ashes, Big Bash, all without players, all liable for cancellation.

Skipping Bangladesh would have been trouble enough, in terms of support at the ICC, but bailing on India or a home Ashes would have meant financial ruin.

Here was always Cricket Australia's fatal flaw: it had the most to lose. Cancellations would hurt players, but only if administrators forfeited their job in a blaze of self-destruction.

With the cliff approaching, they decided not to play Thelma and Louise.

A board from the business world

Onlookers will assume it was Sutherland at the wheel. But having concluded the first revenue share in 1998, and signed off every repeat thereafter, there is no reason to think his attitude had changed. What had changed was Cricket Australia filling its board with business executives.

Cricket Australia chairman David Peever holds a number of powerful positions in the business community. ( AAP: Mal Fairclough )

It was 2012 when Don Argus, chairman of BHP, recommended David Peever of Rio Tinto. In four years, the new mining man would be chairman. The Platonic ideal of the charcoal suit, Peever holds a string of powerful positions. He currently helps run an investment company, Brisbane airport, the Business Council of Australia, French submarine-maker DCNS and the Melbourne Business School. Tony Abbott appointed him to the Indigenous Advisory Council.

Of Peever's board, Michelle Tredenick also sits for a bank and an insurance giant. Jacqueline Hey has a bank, an investment company, and Qantas airlines. Bob Every chaired Wesfarmers, Boral, and yet another mining company. Earl Eddings is a career executive who runs equine syndicates under the banner of Eddings Thoroughbreds International, though it races nothing international and precious few thoroughbreds. Tony Harrison runs Corporate Communications.

Ex-captain Mark Taylor is synonymous with the Nine Network, and publicly backed Cricket Australia against the players. Former Test bowler Michael Kasprowicz runs an international consulting business and is on the Australia-India Council, a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade body promoting business ties.

Only career sports administrator John Harnden is less directly involved with for-profit corporates.

Business pedigrees get people appointed to non-profits for the exact reasons they shouldn't.

Running a corporation doesn't imply transferrable skills or attitudes. Cricket Australia is a tax-exempt organisation bound to serve a common good. What's unacceptable to companies can be indispensable to something better.

Revenue sharing with a unionised workforce involves committing unsecured income, sharing windfalls, and financial transparency, which all mean ceding control. It's against every corporate impulse, and entirely suited to collective enterprise. As soon as Cricket Australia had a corporate majority, killing the revenue-share model appeared to become a priority.

A change in the air

Peever's centrality was confirmed in July with his article in The Australian, a last doomed salvo. Aggrieved, grandiose, it laid the flaws in his attitude bare: "Anyone could be forgiven for thinking CA was proposing the reintroduction of slavery," went one lament. Players were given "a very generous offer", he wrote, as though he were pulling their pay from an ATM himself. No wonder players wanted co-ownership, where no-one has to justify their share.

Sutherland has been around long enough to sniff the wind. At 2016's AGM he signalled revenue sharing was still under debate: "It's speculative to suggest that we will walk away from it." But the board had the power to oust him, and Roberts waited in the wings. When their course was set, Sutherland ceded negotiations to his rival and stepped back quietly, disappearing into a hedge.

Roberts took the Pearl Harbour approach: hit hard early and hope your opponent gives in. Japanese strategists knew that the longer a war, the worse their chances. They effectively lost as soon as Roosevelt uttered the words "absolute victory". Cricket's bureaucrats didn't realise the same timeline applied.

Sutherland, though, would have known the players wouldn't fold.

He knew the Australian Cricketers Association and cricket's finances better than anyone.

Perhaps he had to watch his directors fall in the sort of hole miners will dig. You can strain to stop someone hurting themselves, winning only resentment for the effort, or spare yourself the cost and get praise for patching them up.

In early July, a week after contracts expired, in he swept to the music of crisis alarms. Negotiations advanced. In three weeks, the fight was abandoned. It was August, and the governing body had no choice.

Charging to the rescue

Perhaps Sutherland had done as well as anyone could. The board getting its own way had nearly wrecked the joint. His rival's credibility was shredded: it was Sutherland who got to play cavalry, Sutherland whose moderate stance was vindicated, Sutherland who sat in the press conference to announce a deal done. Externally, few may appreciate the distinction. Internally, it's known who cleaned up the mess.

It's easy after a dispute to box things up. Never mind, both sides had a scrap, all forgotten. But it shouldn't be lost that this fight was picked by those with broadest responsibility.

The Australian Cricketers Association is justified in its narrower interest: of course players want the game to flourish, but tasking its welfare to them is absurd.

If those who govern aren't accountable, why have governance at all?

Whatever Cricket Australia's rationale, the misjudgement of approach was staggering. It was tin-eared, vision-fogged, and with no nose for the smell of its own decay. With the AGM on hand, and others in cricket's community able to demand account, this is no longer about the heat of disagreement. It's about the damage done.

In attacking its own players, Cricket Australia tarnished its biggest asset and fouled its most important relationship. In pulling a power play, it may have destroyed what power it had, leaving its limitations permanently exposed.

There is no likely way to rebuild that authority. To start with goodwill and credibility, a change of personnel is required: those responsible at Cricket Australia shouldn't work there anymore.

Geoff Lemon is a writer and broadcaster.