Baird Booted From Cricket Australia For Trying To Gentrify Big Bash Like He Did Kings Cross

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

The architect of Sydney's transformation from a chaotic international city into a puritan yuppie gloryhole has reportedly been told to walk the plank by Cricket Australia after trying to do the same thing to the Big Bash League.

Former NSW Premier Mike Baird has had the support of Cricket NSW revoked over his handling of the proposed privatisation of the BBL, making his position as Cricket Australia chair increasingly difficult.

Sources close to Cricket NSW say alarm bells began ringing when administrators realised Baird appeared to be applying the same philosophy to Australian cricket that helped turn Kings Cross from Sydney's engorged codpiece, the familiar neon-lit den of vice into somewhere you can't even buy a coffee after 8pm.

"We've seen this movie before," said one Cricket NSW source.

"First you tell everyone the place has gotten a bit unruly. Then you clean it up. Then you make it safer. Then suddenly everything's owned by some enormous corporation and the only people left are North Shore downsizers drinking natural wine with their cunty little adult children."

Baird drew the ire of millions of New South Welshpeople last decade for overseeing sweeping changes to Sydney nightlife while his government also pursued the widespread privatisation of public assets.

His privatisation track record includes TransGrid, Ausgrid, the Port of Newcastle, Macquarie Generation, Colongra Power Station and Vales Point Power Station. Before resigning in 2017, his government also progressed the privatisation of Endeavour Energy after the earlier sale of Port Botany and Port Kembla.

"We had to draw a line somewhere," the Cricket NSW source continued.

"NSW has already watched half the state get flogged off and Kings Cross turned into a suburb where you need a booking to eat something. We weren't going to sit there and let the same thing happen to the Big Bash."

Cricket NSW and Queensland Cricket have indicated resistance to the privatisation push, while other states appear considerably more open to outside investment.

That has raised fears among traditionalists that the Big Bash could soon undergo the full Sydney treatment. Privately owned, heavily sanitised and stripped of most of the weird shit that made people like it in the first place.

"Give it five years and the Sixers will be owned by a private equity fund, or worse, an Indian billionaire, and you'll need to scan a QR code to put your details in before you buy that $79 flat cap from the merch trailer, and they'll stop serving full-strength meat pies after the fourth over," said the source.

"Then Mike will stand there and tell everyone the atmosphere has never been better."

There are no formal plans to stop the Big Bash privatisation, but for those who've already watched one beloved public institution after another become cleaner, quieter and considerably more expensive, the warning signs are apparently difficult to ignore.

More to come.