In The Times, Christopher Martin-Jenkins interviews Malcolm Speed, the ICC’s chief executive, about the problems facing cricket’s governing body.

The two main issues seem to be the format of the World Cup and Zimbabwe. On the World Cup, Speed admits that things need looking at:

“We will thoroughly review the 2007 tournament, learn from any mistakes and do our best to ensure they are not repeated. I think 16 teams is a good number, but there is scope to knock at least a week off the duration by playing through Easter and scheduling more than one game a day. The popularity of day/night matches in the four host countries could enable us to have day games and day/night games running on the same dates.”

And as for Zimbabwe, it is very much the same message as has been trotted out for several years:

“We have said consistently that governments should make political decisions rather than cricket boards and if a government refuses its team permission to tour another country, we respect that. If sporting sanctions are to apply, they must apply to all sports. I do not believe that they would solve any of the problems that the people of Zimbabwe face.”

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