In New Zealand’s Sunday Star Times Richard Boock makes the very pertinent point that the criticism that has been leveled at the ICC is actually aimed at the wrong target.
“The invective has flown thick and fast. Murderers and rapists have escaped with lighter criticism. The world body has been charged with endorsing corruption and racism, of being broken-backed and weak, and by one writer, of being amoral, unprincipled, shallow, self-centred, ill-informed and contemptible. Oh yes, and pathetic.
But the point is, it doesn't make any sense for the cricket community to roast the ICC over this, because the ICC is the cricketing community. The world body's voting members are the chairmen and presidents of the 10 test-playing nations. They are the face of world cricket; a representative image. Buffoons maybe, but what does that say of us?"
Boock goes on to say that rather than the faceless ICC who protected Zimbabwe and ousted Malcolm Speed, it was the heads of the national boards … our national boards.
“I understand that it would be nice to imagine the world body as a separate entity, a mythical bogeyman that we could tar-and-feather and pelt with fruit, but the reality lies a little closer to home. If we want to think of them as a pack of idiots, that's fine - but we should always remember that they're our idiots, and we chose them.”
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