Former ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed feels Cricket Australia's financial matters are complicated and CEO Kevin Roberts has failed to offer the clarity required.
Under financial stress, CA has already put 80 per cent of its staff on 20 per cent salary till end of June, while a handful of others, including the executives, remained on 80 per cent pay.
The decision saved 3 million Australian dollars, which was slammed by critics due to the fact that CA had some A$90 million in reserves at the end of March (2020), including A$36 million in stock investments.
"I saw an article saying cricket has lost millions of dollars on the stock market. Well, before it lost millions on the stock market it made millions of dollars on the stock market and its lost part of its profits, but it hasn't lost anything yet because it hasn't sold. That was an issue”, he added.
"I don't think cricket's financial issues have been explained very well, they're quite complicated, and I think Kevin Roberts has stumbled through that and tried to clarify the issue, but it's very difficult to follow," Speed, who served as chief executive of CA between 1997 and 2001, told SEN Radio. "There's been lots of surprise, there seemed to be surprise from staff at CA that they were stood down, so they didn't see that one coming. So I think there's still some explaining to be done there," he said.
"I'd be very surprised if Kevin lost his job as a result of this, but then again I've been surprised by a couple of the other things that have happened." Speed said: “Increasingly as we move through this Covid-19 situation, that seems increasingly unlikely that's going to be able to happen.”