Todd Greenberg returns to his first love to run Australian cricket

For those who kvell (take pride) in the deeds of Australian Jewish athletes, it has been quite the year.

The canoe slalom Fox sisters – Jess and Noemie – with their Olympic gold medals, race walker Jemima Montag with her pair of bronze medals in Paris and Harry Sheezel, who after just two seasons, is already one of the best 30 players in the AFL.

But last week marked another significant achievement for Jewish sport in this country with Todd Greenberg’s appointment as the next chief executive of Cricket Australia.

There has been no shortage of Jews in positions of authority in Australian sport. Two generations of Lowy’s – Frank then Steven – have helmed football (soccer) in Australia. Frank saved the sport from self-immolating and Steven, with the wisdom of hindsight, might have been prematurely cast out.

Larry Kestleman rescued the National Basketball League and has grown it into one of the premier basketball competitions outside the United States. And various Jewish business and community leaders have sat on league boards and guided  leading clubs, in some cases nearly a century ago, for all the major football codes.

But Greenberg is different. These others held titular roles whereas Greenberg has made sports administration his living and it is doubtful that there is anyone in the country with a better CV.

The three biggest and most powerful sports in this country are Australian Rules football, rugby league and cricket, and Greenberg, who was chief executive of the NRL between 2016 and 2020, will be the first to have sat in the big chair for two of them (though David Gallop was CEO of the NRL and Football Federation Australia, and John O’Neill headed Rugby Australia and then the FFA).