Former New Zealand Cricket (NZC) Chief Executive Justin Vaughan led the board from 2007 to 2011, as franchise T20 cricket began reshaping the sport, and he now says the lessons of that period apply to the proposed NZ20 league. Vaughan, a former Black Cap, lives in Sydney and says he is not directly involved in the current discussions. When India won the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007 with a third-string side captained by the then unheard-of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the IPL followed. Speaking to Brendon Egan of the Sunday Star-Times, Vaughan said: “We had New Zealand players being offered lucrative contracts to go to a rebel league, the Indian Cricket League. That created a lot of stress in the system. We lost some good players, including Shane Bond. That was really hard.” The IPL then gave NZC a lifeline by setting aside a lot of contracts for its players in the first auction, and he credits strong relationships with the players’ association, Australia and India for getting the board through. He also says he left NZC in better financial shape, with more people playing the game and the national teams doing well.
A calendar the ICC must fix
The pressure he describes then has only grown. Boards that depend on international revenue want to play many matches while franchise leagues multiply and world events add to the load, a problem world rugby is tackling with its Nations Championship. The World Test Championship has given the Black Caps’ coming Tests against India real meaning, but Vaughan said: “Bilateral ODI and bilateral T20 series they need context and at the moment there’s so much cricket going on that it can feel meaningless and that’s an issue New Zealand Cricket needs to grapple with, but on a larger scale the ICC needs to be able to take a leadership position because you’ve got all these T20 competitions sprouting up around the world, different franchise leagues.” He would like the ICC to bring all countries onto the same page. Vaughan explained: “Whether it’s windows for T20 competitions or windows for international cricket, it would make sense to have a much better structured cricket calendar.”
The NZ20 questions
The direction of domestic T20 cricket has divided the cricket community, and Sir Richard Hadlee has criticised the lack of transparency around significant board decisions and called for the directors to step down. Vaughan says his only motivation is to see cricket in New Zealand thrive, and he points out that the plan involves NZC selling assets it could not get back. He said: “I can’t think of a bigger decision for New Zealand Cricket in the past two or three decades.” He added: “To me the scale of the decision means New Zealand Cricket needs to be extremely proactive and extremely transparent with information to be able to put their side of the story \[across\].”
The capital funds NZC says will support the major and district associations would depend on selling franchises for large sums. Vaughan says he does not know who is investing or on what terms, and asks about NZC’s shareholding, the governance of the competition, how much control the board would keep and what revenue would return each year. He also asks what happens to international cricket and to January if the month turns into late-evening domestic T20 matches for international time zones, which he doubts fans want. Describing himself as conservative by nature, he cannot name a comparable competition he would want NZ20 to copy, and says New Zealand is not India, so NZ20 cannot be the IPL. He also doubts private equity has been a great success in New Zealand rugby, and warns it is risky and hard to step back from once the decision is made. He said: “New Zealand, we face an uphill battle getting a domestic franchise competition to be a big commercial success because of the size of our market and the time zones we operate in.”
The Big Bash alternative
Vaughan does not rule out a New Zealand presence in Australia. The Warriors have been great for rugby league in New Zealand despite being one team in a mostly Australian competition, and Auckland FC, the Phoenix and the Breakers are further success stories. He would not see joining a lively Australian competition as a disaster, though keeping control could be good if a viable league can be built. Asked for his preference, Vaughan said: “If you say to me what do you think has the best potential then I would suggest, if you could having a couple of teams in the Big Bash and then having a feeder competition in New Zealand, which also attracted young Australian players.” That feeder league would run before the Big Bash, and he calls it a great outcome while stressing it is only his view.
A former emergency department doctor, Vaughan now runs a lifestyle health business in Sydney called Essentio Health. He believes current New Zealand Cricket Chief Executive Geoff Allott faces a very stressful time given the size of the NZ20 decision, but describes him as a good person who will have NZC’s interests at heart.
