In the Age, Greg Baum considers the proposed US$70 million deal between India and Sri Lanka - a key plank of the agreement would be Sri Lanka's unconditional support for the IPL - which he believes is indicative of the currents in world cricket.
Another is the schadenfreude some in the cricket world demonstrate towards England, which it sees as the once imperious power getting its comeuppance. This is unfair. Two wrongs do not make a right, let alone a system of governance. England is the only country to stand up to the rampant Indians on a point of principle that every other country purports to hold dear. Evidently, the rest are either dazzled or too afraid.
Australia, oddly, sits in a back seat. Once, this would have been the business of an Australian president of the ICC, an Australian chief executive and an all-powerful Australian board. Now, seemingly, Australia is one of the chorus. If it loses the current Test series in India, it will have lost even moral authority.
In any case, India appears to be regarding the ICC and, implicitly, the rest of the cricket world with contempt. Reportedly, the IPL is seeking to negotiate with Pakistan the same sort of deal it has made with Sri Lanka: lots of money, in return for obeisance to the Twenty20 god. For Pakistan, which has become a cricketing never-never, rarely visited and increasingly destitute, it will surely prove irresistible.
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