Australian cricket's owners will be asked to vote on the addition of a 10th director - the fourth independent director - to the Cricket Australia Board (CAB) at its Annual General Meeting (AGM) later this month.
CA's intention is to hand the new position on the board to the ABC and Santos director, Dr Vanessa Guthrie, who has also served as deputy chair of the Western Australian Cricket Association in recent years and is the former chair of the Minerals Council of Australia, ESPNcricinfo reported.
"New South Wales wanted to put up Mike Baird, so went through a number of discussions around that, we also think Richard Freudenstein's been an outstanding director, even more so at the moment given his media background, so we've moved him across as an independent and Mike Baird comes on," CA's chairman Earl Eddings said.
"It's always very difficult with nine seats trying to meet all the requirements of diversity, ex-international players and skillsets. So we felt it was a prudent thing to take a bit of pressure off the states to put another independent there, so it gives us a bit more flexibility going forward. Vanessa's an outstanding candidate, so I think it's a win-win," he added.
Such a change to the CA constitution must be agreed to by a two-thirds majority of the states, who at the AGM will each be represented by three voting representatives. This measure was itself a product of the political maneuvering required to move to an independent board, as the increase of all states to three votes - by a simple majority vote - was devised to circumvent South Australia's opposition to the removal of direct representation.
( With inputs from ANI )
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