Cricket Australia’s (CA) long-serving CEO James Sutherland will be leaving his position from the board later this month and Kevin Roberts will be replacing him, who was the face of Cricket Australia during toxic negotiations for a new pay deal with players. The latter has a strong corporate background as he has been Sutherland’s deputy for a number of years since joining the CA board as an independent director in 2012.

Roberts got to the position after beating several candidates, including board director John Harnden, who organized the successful 2015 World Cup co-hosted with New Zealand, and former New South Wales cricket chairman John Warn. He takes over CA at a sensitive time as board’s governance is going to get under review and the culture of the men’s team whose reputation was left in tatters by the ball-tampering scandal in South Africa.

On Wednesday, during a press conference in Melbourne, Roberts told a media that he would be paying players’ union boss Alistair Nicholson “the respect” of a phone call later in the day. He said, “There’s no doubt it was a challenging situation. But we move forward, we learn and we make commitments as to how we grow the game and how we develop relationships. I’ll head up to the UAE (United Arab Emirates) to meet with the Australian men’s team and coaching staff and also catch up with the women’s team.”

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Under the leadership of Tim Paine, the Australian team is set to play Pakistan in a two-test series in the Gulf nation starting next week. 

Sutherland was holding the CEO position since 2001 and in June he announced that he had given CA a year’s notice of his intention to step down but Roberts will formally take over the role later this month when confirmed at the board’s annual general meeting.

Roberts will have big shoes to fill, with Sutherland having helped turn the game into a commercial powerhouse in one of the world’s most crowded sports markets, securing a string of lucrative broadcast deals and ushering in the popular Twenty20 ‘Big Bash’ league in 2011.