Authorities reject Waugh's call for free admission

Steve Waugh's comments at the weekend that people should be allowed to watch Pura Cup matches for free were dismissed by Cricket Australia, who said that doing so would devalue the domestic competition.

Waugh said this week the Pura Cup competition should be made free for the public, in particular children, in a bid to arrest the problem of matches being played out in front of small crowds. But state administrators don't want the world's best domestic competition devalued in the eyes of the public to much the same level as club cricket.

"It's devaluing the competition by making it free," said Shaun Graf, general manager of Cricket Victoria's operations department. "It does place itself a little bit above maybe a local competition as such. Whether or not we go towards one day's gate takings per game going to a charity - a gold coin donation - is something we would be looking at down the track. I suppose it's [Waugh's idea] got some merit but whether or not it makes any difference to the size of crowds, I doubt it."

David Gilbert, NSW's chief executive said, throwing open the gates to the public was not the answer to solving a complex problem. "The main issue is the fact that you haven't got your best players available often enough," said Gilbert about the tough challenge of attracting crowd to watch interstate games. "You could probably count on one hand the number of games Glenn McGrath has played for us in the last five years. Unfortunately that's just the reality. The only reason we've got Steve Waugh at the moment is because he was dropped from the Australian one-day team."

Queensland boss Graham Dixon agreed, noting that Test batsman Matthew Hayden had not played for the Bulls in the past 18 months and would be available for just one Pura Cup game this season. Gilbert believes the future of the domestic competition lies in taking the game to country and regional areas. "There's a lot of country people who are starved of this sort of elite competition," he added. In the 2002/03 season, a four-day crowd of 16,000 watched NSW beat Western Australia in a Pura Cup clash in Newcastle.

The problem is that many state bodies are locked into contracts with their home ground authorities - for example, the Blues are only allowed to play one Pura Cup match away from the SCG over the next two seasons.

Gilbert said he could understand the frustrations of Waugh, who's in Adelaide preparing for the Pura Cup clash between NSW and South Australia starting tomorrow at Adelaide Oval. He was confident the obstacles could be overcome but it would take a lot of creative effort. "Everywhere you look there's potential barriers but I think it's winnable," he said. "It just needs to be more imaginative in the way we program the games."