Global vision obscured by self-interest

[King]

The governance of world cricket is a mess. It can scarcely be otherwise when the executives who are charged with running the game must bend their knee to administrators whose interests are confined by the narrow boundaries of the countries they represent, writes Mike Atherton. More... Global vision obscured by self-interest By Mike Atherton, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:08am BST 01/07/2007 Video: Andrew Flintoff The governance of world cricket is a mess. South of the Thames this week spectators enjoyed again what can be achieved when administrators take decisive and bold action, as Twenty20 continued to hold the cricket lover, or at least those of younger age, in thrall. Further north the International Cricket Council were ensconced at Lord's for a whole week of pow-wowing but, predictably, precious little of value emerged. It can scarcely be otherwise when the executives who are charged with running the game must bend their knee to administrators whose interests are confined by the narrow boundaries of the countries they represent. Checks and balances may be good for democracies but they are no way to run sport. There were some important issues raised this week - none more so than the disgrace that has become cricket in Zimbabwe - but the most fundamental was ignored. Nobody saw fit to raise the question: What sort of governing body do we want to run the game? A small, independent and powerful decision-making group, with the game's best interests at heart and given proper executive control, or one overpopulated, as it is now, with some self-serving and narrow-minded administrators charged with agendas that are equally narrow-minded and self-serving. Last week, Richard Bevan, the head of the Professional Cricketers' Association sent a blast across the bows of Malcolm Speed, the chief executive of the ICC, following the fingering of the officials who made such a pig's ear of the World Cup final. Bevan cited fundamental errors ranging from Zimbabwe, the Super Series, the Champions' Trophy and the Future Tours Programme. ''If I acted like that, I'd expect to have my arse kicked but nobody seems to take responsibility,'' he said. The inference was clear. Speed, in Bevan's opinion, ought to be for the high jump. Much of Bevan's analysis is spot on, but blaming Speed is shooting the messenger; he is, ultimately, a chief executive with limited powers. Until the ICC undergo fundamental reform to give executives full authority, the game will continue to be badly served. Consider this week. After five days of meetings we might have hoped for a little more meat on the bone. This is what they came up with: a compromise between David Morgan and Sharad Pawar over the presidency, and a return to a rota system to choose future presidents; Zimbabwe to remain in the Test wilderness; a ratification of the recommendations of the cricket committee; an agreement that future World Cups will not exceed five weeks in length; the establishment of an umpiring task force, and an agreement, in principle, to look at the volume of cricket played. There must have been a couple of long lunches thrown in. Oh, and by the way, Cameroon, the Falkland Islands, Peru and Swaziland were granted affiliate membership. Look at some of those measures in detail, and marvel at the dynamic decision-making of the game's leaders. Prior to the meetings, the battle for the presidency between Morgan and Pawar had reached a stalemate, with the nominations committee locked 3-3, and the executive board 5-5 (just imagine the politicking and the back-scratching that must have gone on to get that far). The two men contemplated the most honourable of solutions - no, not a duel sadly - but a toss of the coin, before Pawar 'sportingly' (according to the man himself) accepted the findings of the governance review committee (by the end of this piece your head will be spinning with the names of various committees). But can this really be the best way to choose the man whose responsibility it is to set out his vision for the global game? Moreover, is a return to a rotational system to choose the post-2012 presidents really the best way of finding the most able men? With a president down the line to come from an affiliate or associate nation, we could have the top cricket man in the Falkland Islands running the game in 2020. Mind you, HRH Tunku Imran (Malaysia) and Stanley Perlman (Israel) found themselves quaffing at the top table this week, so why not. I was looking forward to some juicy announcements on Zimbabwe, given the earlier leaking of Speed's report by the BBC sports editor, Mihir Bose. In it, it was suggested among other things, that Cricket Zimbabwe's accounts ''had been deliberately falsified to mask various illegal transactions'', that, ''it may not be possible to rely on the authenticity of the balance sheet'', and that "the game in Zimbabwe, and, more widely, the rest of the cricket world [my italics] will not be best served by Zimbabwe resuming Test cricket at this stage". With sums upwards of a million dollars (and with inflation in Zimbabwe, according to independent economists, running at 20,000 per cent, certainly not Zimbabwe dollars) twice unaccounted for, the corruption that is cricket in Zimbabwe had been laid bare. Publicly, Speed has always been ultra defensive on Zimbabwe but the italicised remarks suggest, privately, a more humane dimension beneath the lawyerly exterior. But instead of publicly humiliating Cricket Zimbabwe, as the ICC board should have done, it was left to Zimbabwe itself, in the risible form of Peter Chingoka, to suggest that the time was not right for its return. An independent audit has been recommended, although it says much for the perceptions of the organisation by its members that the audit carried out by Faisal Hasnain, the ICC's chief financial officer, should not be considered independent enough.. And so to one of the most pressing issues of the day: the volume of cricket that is currently in danger of devaluing some of the cricket that is laid before today's spectators. The ICC board noted the views (that's good of them) of the cricket committee and directed the ICC management to formulate a draft programme with a view to reducing the volume of cricket within certain parameters. But, and here's the rub, "once produced, the draft programme will then be reviewed by the ICC board although possible implementation, if appropriate, may be delayed due to members' existing commercial arrangements". Nothing could state the problems of the ICC more clearly than that: a powerless executive hamstrung by the self-interest of the member countries. The future direction that the ICC should take is clear, and it comes in the form of the re-constituted cricket committee. In this instance it was made up of former players of high repute and standing and, crucially, they were selected by the ICC management board and not elected by the member countries. Their recommendations (changing the white ball after 35 overs, allowing another fielder outside the inner ring during the second or third power play etc, etc), which were universally accepted, were not at all earth-shattering, but that they were made independently with the best interests of the game at heart makes them far easier to accept. It is the template which ought to operate throughout the organisation that is charged with running the game. All in all, after another week of politicking and dull compromise, the fly that is usually so eager to get inside the walls to listen to the goings on at these meetings, was probably desperate to find its way out.