The front of the Age's sport pages reflects the anger inside Australia following the outcome of the Harbhajan Singh hearing © The Age

On the topic of India's over-the-top reactions to the events in Australia, Harsha Bhogle, in the Sydney Morning Herald, explains that it has a lot to do with the change in attitude of the average Indian over the decades.

Since I was a little child, my abiding memory is of visiting journalists and cricketers coming to India and making fun of us.We were a country finding our feet, we were not confident, we seethed within but we accepted. The new generation in India is not as accepting, they are prouder, more confident, more successful. Those bottled-up feelings are bubbling through.

The Daily Telegraph reveals that Ricky Ponting made the decision to agree to have Harbhajan Singh's racial abuse charge downgraded after a series of secret meetings with lawyers during the Test match in Adelaide.

"Just fix it then," Ponting is understood to have said when emotions flared. As Symonds came to terms with the judgment, it's believed he said: "I can't believe this is happening."

The Australian has acquired the full text of Justice John Hansen's decision in Harbhajan Singh's appeal.

Australian newspapers are full of reaction to the outcome of the Harbhajan Singh affair, in The Age it is reported that the Australian cricketers are furious that Harbhajan Singh has escaped suspension.

"The thing that pisses us off is that it shows how much power India has," said a contracted Australian player, who refused to be named. "The Aussie guys aren't going to make it (the accusation) up. The players are frustrated because this shows how much influence India has, because of the wealth they generate. Money talks.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Alex Brown says, "in matters directly involving the Indians, don't expect an impartial outcome. Both the BCCI and the ICC have shown their hand in that regard during the past month."

In the Australian Peter Lalor writes, "India, the team that bleated about the spirit of cricket after being beaten in Sydney, has again held a gun to the game's head and had its demands met."

Adelaide Now's Geoff Roach tracks the day's events.

An air of anxiety began to stir among them as the start of play drew nigh without any sign of the principal players. That soon turned to frustration when it was learned the Australian participants had performed their own version of an Indian rope trick by driving into an underground car park and entering the building via a basement lift.

Fearing the same would happen with the Indian party, most camera operators surged 80m east to the car park entrance – only to have to sprint frantically back as a black BMW disgorged Harbhajan and team manager Chetan Chauhan outside the front at 10.50am.

The Australian sports radio stations too are abuzz with listeners calling in to air their opinions. Click here to listen to a few stations.

It’s not just inside Australia comment that the result of the Harbhajan hearing has attracted comment. In The Times, Christopher Martin-Jenkins is less than complimentary about the BCCI’s role.

One understands, of course, the particular sensitivity of matters pertaining to race, but either the BCCI, like all other national representative bodies, accepts the rules of the ICC and, in this case, the procedures that everyone has agreed, whatever the outcome, or there is potential anarchy.

It would not be a good thing if it were to become the expected outcome of every appeal that, whenever a nation's pride is ruffled, oil will be poured on troubled waters. Every case has to be judged on its merits.

Also in The Times Patrick Kidd writes that both teams should move on.

1) If they felt that he had done nothing wrong, India were right to fight this to clear his name. They should now refrain from gloating or complaining about being picked on and get on with the cricket.

2) If Australia thought they had heard a racial slur, they were right to complain. They should now accept that they were mistaken, not complain about the verdict and get on with the cricket.

Prem Panicker, writing in rediff.com, wonders whether in the light of the judgement ICC would take any action on Mike Procter.

Is it fair to say that Procter brought the game into disrepute by delivering a contentious verdict where there was—according to the ICC’s own man—no evidence to underpin such a judgment? And if that is a fair assessment of the performance of the match referee, is it fair to ask what, if anything, the ICC does, what processes it has, to monitor its own officials, to pull them up, to ensure optimum performance?

December 11, 2007

African administrators continue to disappoint

Posted on 12/11/2007 in ICC

Peter Roebuck writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that while on-field progress is being made by black players in South Africa and Zimbabwe, it is in spite of the game's administrators and not because of them.

Zimbabwe has given Mali an opportunity to redeem himself and he has flunked it. Far from confronting those responsible for the debacle, he has become an apologist. And so again, he tries to sweeten tyranny, not end it. Not that Sonn was any better. Indeed, he was a grievous disappointment. A much more capable man with an honourable past, he too turned a blind eye to the rats in his own ranks. It was painful to hear a man of his calibre defending the indefensible merely on grounds of colour. By turning his back on election rigging, torture, rampant misuse of funds, intimidation and the other ghastly practices of tyranny, he betrayed the causes and people he was supposed to protect. He preferred to be part of the notorious Black Label Brotherhood than to advance the lot of the common man. Settling scores is a denial of greatness, not an expression of it.

October 10, 2007

Hair’s retraction not a victory for the ICC

Posted on 10/10/2007 in ICC

	Darrell Hair walks to the High Court in London ahead of his employment tribunal © Getty Images

Lawrence Booth, writing in the Guardian, feels that the ICC has lost face despite Darrell Hair’s decision to drop his racial discrimination case against them.

The truth, though, is that neither side has emerged with reputation enhanced. Hair's allegation of racism - based on the fact that he, a white Australian, was in effect sacked from the ICC's elite panel, while Billy Doctrove, his Dominican colleague at The Oval, was not - has been exposed as groundless. But his grievance forced the ICC to do its dirty-linen washing in public, and the game's governing body now faces serious questions after seven days of testimony at a London employment tribunal in which its handling of the case was shown to be amateurish at best.

Meanwhile, the Australian's Peter Wilson reveals that the chairman of Cricket Australia, Creagh O'Connor, went along with the ICC's decision to prosecute Hair, despite feeling that "Darrell should be allowed to continue to umpire."

October 7, 2007

ICC experience a bad Hair day

Posted on 10/07/2007 in ICC

	Darrell Hair arrives for the first day of the tribunal © Getty Images

Darrell Hair’s legal action against the ICC claiming racial discrimination reached the end of the first week in London with some remarkable claims by Ray Mali, the ICC’s interim president. But it has also exposed the ICC’s hierarchy and the media has not been overly impressed with what has been seen.

Simon Wilde in The Sunday Times says that Friday was the ICC’s bad hair day:

Malcolm Speed must be offering up a silent prayer of thanks that next year he is getting out of the surreal world of cricket administration after the mauling the ICC has taken at the London Employment Tribunal …

Whatever the outcome, the case has highlighted serious issues for the wider game of cricket. First, the ICC needs to be run by a smaller executive with powers to act decisively and swiftly without recourse to an unwieldy and politically hamstrung executive board. And officials need training in sports administration.

Former England captain Michael Atherton uses his Sunday Telegraph column to put forward similar opinions:

If the ICC have many more disastrous days, such as they endured on Friday – the start of, in David Cameron-speak, 'The Great Darrell Hair Fight-Back' – it might be a seminal moment for the future of the administration of the game.

It was the turn of three of the ICC directors – Sir John Anderson (New Zealand), Inderjit Singh Bindra (India) and Ray Mali (then the South African director, now the president) – to face cross-examination by Hair's lawyer, Robert Griffiths QC. What a time of it Griffiths had! Turning to the gallery with a malevolent grin every time a point was scored, he revealed completely the vacuum of leadership at the heart of the organisation that purports to run the game.

One by one these well-meaning, certainly not racist but undoubtedly bumbling and, on this evidence, incompetent administrators shuffled to the front of the room, raised their right hands and promised to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. One by one they were sent packing, lacerated from head to foot by Griffiths's ordered mind and razor tongue.

July 18, 2007

Reserving a seat on the ICC gravy train

Posted on 07/18/2007 in ICC

Zimbabwe have dropped out of the ICC Test rankings, leaving the ICC in the embarrassing situation of being controlled by ten Test countries when only nine are officially listed, writes Malcolm Conn in The Australian.

The International Cricket Council's latest rankings no longer include Zimbabwe, yet its administrators continue to ride the gravy train of elite status and all the money and control that it entails. Zimbabwe's players often complain they are not paid on time, if at all, and a recent financial report by ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed was damning. But Speed's hands are completely tied because of an ICC board dominated by the Afro-Asia bloc, which is more interested in good mates than good cricket. An attempt to take Zimbabwe's future out of its own hands was disgracefully rejected by the ICC board, so now Zimbabwe is painted as making the magnanimous gesture of standing out of Test cricket for the good of the game.

July 1, 2007

Plenty of talk, few answers

Posted on 07/01/2007 in ICC

ICC have had their annual conference at Lord's this week with David Morgan named as the next president and various other issues being discussed ranging from Zimbabwe to the size of playing areas. However, in The Sunday Telegraph, Michael Atherton says that for all the talking the basic problem remains: the people who are running the game.

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.

Over in the Independent on Sunday, Stephen Brenkley says that although the bank balance looks healthy there isn't much else to smile about in the cricket world.

Zimbabwe may never play Test cricket again. West Indies are in a state of utter disarray. Bangladesh demonstrated again last week that they remain woefully uncompetitive. The recent World Cup, by common consent, was desperate. As was the Champions Trophy, the so-called mini-World Cup, that preceded it.

June 12, 2007

Mali misses the point

Posted on 06/12/2007 in ICC

The new ICC president’s first public comments do little to offer any real hope of change in the way the game is run, argues Malcolm Conn in The Australian. Ray Mali rejected suggestions the international cricket schedule was too hectic and indicated Zimbabwe would have a say in when they would return to Test status.

Following a shambolic World Cup, a FICA survey of leading players from most major cricket countries found that 56 per cent lacked confidence in the ICC to govern the game. Mali's complete lack of understanding of the serious issues facing cricket will do nothing to reduce that perception.

June 5, 2007

Benaud has stature to steer the ICC

Posted on 06/05/2007 in ICC

	Richie Benaud: the best man to take over as ICC president? © Getty Images

Richie Benaud is the man who could be best suited to take over as the president of the ICC after the death of Percy Sonn, says Mark Nicholas in The Daily Telegraph. Worried over administrators overlooking the game's finer aspects in the race for burgeoning revenues, Nicholas writes:

Sonn's replacement as president until 2009 - in theory, a period without any major television battles to fight - should be a former player, someone of such indisputable stature that its board members will listen and learn about the game they purport to value but are defacing. Top of the shopping list should be Richie Benaud but given that he is unlikely to want the hassle, there are crop of younger men worthy of global respect and edgy enough to give it a crack. Imran Khan is one; Michael Holding and Mark Taylor are others.

May 29, 2007

Worries over woeful West Indies

Posted on 05/29/2007 in ICC

In The Australian, Malcolm Conn complains about the "parlous" state of world cricket, with West Indies not having won a Test since May 2005.

There are only 10 official Test-playing nations and three of them now range from hopeless to utterly hopeless. What other major international sport has 30 per cent of its teams which are so uncompetitive they cannot win a single match between them in 24 months? The plight is so bad that while Zimbabwe remains on the gravy train of the International Cricket Council's board of Test countries which control the game, it is so weak it is not even playing Test cricket. Unfortunately the ICC is so utterly gutless and politically compromised that it fails to impose any minimum standards on its teams.

The ICC's own player rankings, which are constantly emailed as part of a sponsorship deal, highlights just how little regard the fundamentally flawed organisation has for standards. There is not a single Zimbabwe player ranked in the top 100 batsmen or bowlers. It's not that hard if you're any good. Stuart MacGill, who has not played for more than a year, is still ranked 20 and Michael Kasprowicz 34. It's time for the ICC to step up where it counts.

Presidential power-struggle looms

Posted on 05/29/2007 in ICC

The unexpected death of Percy Sonn leaves the ICC in an awkward position, trying to agree on a replacement just months after extending Sonn’s term, writes Malcolm Conn in The Australian.

The world governing body is in such turmoil that those in charge around the board table could not even decide who should run the organisation. It doesn't bode well for an organisation that can't run a decent showpiece event, the World Cup, or set acceptable standards for international cricket following the continuing freefall of Zimbabwe, when it can't even find a leader.

May 24, 2007

Zimbabwe and World Cup format dominate troubled ICC’s horizon

Posted on 05/24/2007 in ICC

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.”

May 8, 2007

Cricket's administration: rotten from the top

Posted on 05/08/2007 in Australian cricket

In The Australian, Malcolm Conn says that John Howard’s offer to pay any fine levied by the ICC should Australia refuse to tour Zimbabwe is not the solution:

A government ban would solve all of CA's problems but with it would come a Pandora's box. Should there also be a ban on touring Pakistan next year, given it is a military dictatorship? Should Australia ban its Olympic team from competing in Beijing given China's human rights record?

But he also has a go at the game itself:

The fundamental problem is that the Zimbabwean crisis proves how rotten world cricket administration is at the top.

In its broadest, philosophical sense cricket's weeping sore is a continuation of the fight against colonialism which takes deeply held loyalties to the ICC, regardless of the consequences.

During the dark days of white supremacist rule in South Africa and Zimbabwe, India was a strong ally of the freedom fighters in southern Africa.

Only last month, that nexus was graphically highlighted again when India walked away from an agreement with Australia to play three one-day matches in Ireland next month.

India will now play South Africa in a meaningless match worth millions in television rights. Why? Because Australia is supporting England chairman David Morgan to take over as president of the ICC as part of the proper rotation of the position. South Africa decided to support Indian board chief Sharad Pawar, a government minister.

May 2, 2007

Should Malcom Speed resign?

Posted on 05/02/2007 in ICC

An interesting debate in The Guardian where Asif Iqbal and Gideon Haigh debate both sides of the case why Malcolm Speed should or should not resign following the World Cup debacle.

Asif, who says he should quit, writes that Speed, as CEO, must take responsibility:

The chief executive may be only one person but he must shoulder the blame when things go wrong. If your stakeholders, who are effectively your employers, are indicating they have no confidence in your leadership, how is it possible to continue?

But Haigh disagrees:

Malcolm Speed has been a very unpopular chief executive of the International Cricket Council. But Malcolm Speed was never a very popular chief executive of Cricket Australia. Many of the complaints are the same now as then: too cold, too hard, too aloof, too commercial. In Australia, however, he is as effective an administrator as we have ever seen. Which suggests that if Speed is being judged negatively in his present position, that may say more about the position than its occupant.

May 1, 2007

The perfect template to ruin a sport

Posted on 05/01/2007 in World Cup 2007

	© Getty Images

The post-tournament flack continues to fly three days after the end of the World Cup. In The Times, Simon Barnes pulls no punches about the format and execution of the whole thing:

It had everything, mismatches, one-sided games, games that didn’t matter much, games that were simply short of action or drama or interest. International sporting organisations across the world are invited to study this event long and hard: it is the perfect template for the ruination of a sport.

How can sports administrators make such crass errors? Simple. They aren’t interested in sport. They are interested in power. The more countries you involve, the more power you have. The more money you make from a multi-nation tournament, the more power you have.

In The Daily Telegraph, Simon Hughes, reflecting on the farcical end to the final, writes that petty officialdom and the mindless obstructiveness of jobsworths has gone too far:

As a cricket-mad Hollywood light wrote in an email to me: "For those of us who love the game, it is beyond agonising to watch it systematically being ruined by small-minded, over-literal, bean-counting umpires and officials. It's entertainment, not a bankers' convention!!"

Exactly. As usual the people who really suffer are the paying public who are utterly disregarded in this pursuit of legal untouchability. So much for the 'Spirit of Cricket' preamble to the Laws of Cricket. Where's the 'spirit' in all of this?

In yesterday's Guardian, Gideon Haigh says that the current 50-over format has a limited shelf life and that the World Cup has paved the way for Twenty20.

Fans in the West Indies know their cricket; they do not sit there waiting for the next beach ball to bounce along or Mexican wave to wash over them. Maybe it was not only exorbitant ticket prices that kept them away. Maybe they saw this spectacle for what it was: a bunch of overcoached, overcooked lookalikes providing third-rate content for Rupert Murdoch. Perhaps the idea all along was to soften us up for the inexorable advance of Twenty20 cricket. It has never looked better.

April 30, 2007

Heads should roll for final farce

Posted on 04/30/2007 in World Cup 2007

	Dancing in the dark © Getty Images

While Malcolm Speed steadfastly continues to insist that the World Cup was a success – and as he seems to judge most things in terms of revenue, he may be right – the media is united in its condemnation of the event, with the farcical scenes at the end of the final to the fore.

Mike Selvey in The Guardian leads the way:

The World Cup, the final of which began in spectacular fashion before descending into the unseemly realms of the bizarre, was awarded eventually to Australia in such farcical circumstances that it would have been no surprise to see Steve Bucknor drop his trousers to reveal polka dot underpants and inquire if there was anyone for tennis.

And Selvey also revealed some fascinating facts:

Ten of the 51 matches went down to the last over, in only three of these was the result in any doubt in that last over; 45 games were decided by winning margins of more than 45 runs or five wickets - that is, comfortably; £12.50 to £25 ticket prices hit attendances. In Guyana the price of seeing a game was equivalent to two weeks' wages; 7,000 fans had to make a day trip to St Lucia from Barbados for the Australia v South Africa semi-final. St Lucia hoteliers accepted only 14-night stays at $500 per night.

In The Daily Telegraph, Derek Pringle believes heads should roll for the shambles at the end of the final:

Unhappily for the players, as well as the thousands who selflessly gave time and effort to this blighted tournament, the chaos overshadowed Australia's victory and their incredible feat of winning three World Cups in a row. If the ICC were wooing prospective sponsors at the match, let alone their current partners for this event, they must have been appalled.

And in separate article in the same paper, the busy Pringle reflects on the much-metioned legacy of the event to the region:

The legacy is likely to be a mixed one. Safety and security were over the top, the latter geared mostly to stopping fans bringing in drink not produced by one of the major sponsors. The sight of an old lady being harried before the semi-final in Kingston as she was made to pick the label off her water bottle because it wasn't supplied by a sponsor, was pettiness gone mad. The newly-built stadiums are likely to prove controversial too. Although some were gifts from the Chinese government, others were built with loans, something bound to impact on national budgets. Unless the man in the street has done well from this World Cup, he could end up cursing it for years to come.

And also in the Telegraph, Michael Henderson, as ever, gets straight to the point:

One can only assume that the ICC care not a jot for the game's welfare, or the way it is perceived. If they did they would have ensured that this final ran its proper course: 50 overs a side. Spectators are mere serfs in the ICC's estimation. They don't care whether the grounds are empty or full so long as the telly people continue to pick up the tab.

This World Cup was a disaster, and did nothing for the friendly, cricket-loving people who hosted it. Whether it is Zimbabwe, chucking, hanging Darrell Hair out to dry, endorsing that preposterous non-event called the Champions Trophy, or mucking up the only one-day competition that matters, the ICC can always be relied upon to get it wrong.

In The Times, Christopher Martin-Jenkins writes that Speed himself is now under pressure:

Commercial concerns have overridden cricketing integrity to a dangerous degree. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was not going to miss its chance yesterday to embarrass Malcolm Speed, the Australian lawyer who retires soon as chief executive. After the call by Lalit Modi, vice-president of the BCCI, to replace Speed with a chief executive from Afro-Asia who “understands the problems of a majority of ICC members”, the honorary secretary of India’s own archaic and frequently hypocritical administration, Niranjan Shah, has criticised the council for becoming “more and more bureaucratic” and costing its members money by “unnecessarily employing so many people”. He refused to rule out a no-confidence motion against Speed’s administration at the next meeting of the chief executives in June.

Even in Australia, where the team’s victory is the main story, there is time for reflection on other aspects of the final in the Sydney Morning Herald:

At the post-match ceremony the International Cricket Council president, Percy Sonn, and its chief executive, Malcolm Speed, were jeered. Around the world bewildered TV viewers presumably shared the sentiment.

April 28, 2007

A bloated shambles of a competition

Posted on 04/28/2007 in World Cup 2007

As the World Cup finally ends - yes, honestly – the flak continues to fly in the direction of the ICC. In The Daily Telegraph, Jim White is in no doubt about the target:

“Malcolm Speed, the chief executive of the International Cricket Council, despite presiding over the most over-stretched, bloated shambles of a competition, despite his organising committee redefining the term criminally short-sighted, is to carry on, refusing so much as to contemplate handing over to someone else.”

The Mirror is equally unimpressed, despite Speed’s admission that the tournament was too long:

“He might have added that it has also been wholly uninspiring and suffered from poor attendances, a lack of decent atmosphere, too many one-sided games, and hosted by a team which dragged the tournament down even further.

How is it possible that a football World Cup involving twice as many teams can be held in far fewer than the 47 days this has taken? The answer is greed.”

Patrick Kidd in The Times notes that “wars have been declared and ended in less time than it has taken to stage the 50 matches before today’s final”. He adds some stats about what has happened since the first match back on March 13:

The average price of a house in England has risen by £4,415
A strand of human hair will have grown 1.6cm
The Earth will have travelled about 75,576,000 miles in its orbit around the Sun

April 27, 2007

A bloated non-event leaves an empty feeling

Posted on 04/27/2007 in World Cup 2007

The World Cup might be about to finish, and Malcolm Speed is engaged in a positive-spin initiative that would make Alastair Campbell glow with pride, but the all-out assaults on the way it has been run continue unabated. In The Daily Telegraph, Michael Henderson warms to the task, explaining why there will be a rare sell-out for the final:

Embarrassed by their mismanagement of the World Cup, which has not posted a 'house full' notice until now, the International Cricket Council have rounded up corporate guests from every nook and cranny, and distributed tickets to anybody sound of mind and body who will have them.

This has been the worst tournament imaginable; short of spectators and memorable games, it has also been far too long.

The ICC have had to 'paper the house' time and again because the tickets have been prohibitively expensive for the locals. In St Lucia on Wednesday, more than 6,000 tickets were given away so that television viewers would not see a half-empty ground for the Australia-South Africa semi-final. Also, those grounds have been zealously policed by killjoys instructed to ban anything and everything that is not officially endorsed by the sponsors.

So a competition that was supposed to reflect the best of the Caribbean has been nothing less than a disaster for this part of the world, whose peoples have given so much to the game.

And Henderson, who can never be accused of courting the popular vote, then turns his attention elsewhere:

Neither Pakistan nor India advanced to the not-so-super Super Eights, and, no matter how many tears were shed by the ICC accountants, and the tournament's propagandists, that wasn't a bad thing. Far from it. There are too many cocky people in the sub-continent, particularly India, who think that the future belongs to them because they have attained such commercial clout. As Greg Chappell, their outgoing coach, reminded them on his departure, it's no use trying to match Australia on the field if your organisation off it resembles that of Zimbabwe.

April 24, 2007

Turn-off in 2011 awaits unless ICC has rethink

Posted on 04/24/2007 in World Cup 2007

Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times warns that despite widespread criticism at the bloated nature of the current World Cup, things could get worse in 2011. He explains that suggestions that the number of teams should be reduced have already been bypassed by the ICC, which has agreed it will again feature 16, and, furthermore, there will an extra two matches, taking the total to 53.

He says while the tournament may have been slammed, it has made large sums of money.

All this, however, has been gained at a high cost if the “product” is seen to be less attractive than it should be. The best cricketers in the world need a proper framework to display their skill but to those following from afar, the tournament has seemed interminable. And for interminable read, alas, boring.

All concerned with the tournament in the West Indies and certainly those watching at home are agreed on one thing: a seven-week tournament is too long. The commercial success of the world’s governing body is not in doubt. The snag is that it tends to put the cart before the horse: to consider the bottom line financially before looking after the attraction of the game itself.

Martin-Jenkins' well-argued column is unlikely to go down well among those at the top of the ICC who have been adopting an increasingly siege-mentality attitude to the flack that has been heading their way in recent weeks.

April 4, 2007

A sap to the sponsors

Posted on 04/04/2007 in World Cup 2007

Yesterday, the World Cup organisers, stung by a barrage of criticism about their handling of the tournament, reissued a list of dos and don’ts for spectators attending matches (click here for the full list). The list was quickly ridiculed by Patrick Kidd in his blog on the website of The Times …particularly the ban on alcohol and all animals, except guide dogs:-

What if your guide dog is a St Bernard with one of those kegs of booze round his neck?

It is important that the necessary precautions are taken to ensure maximum safety and security for all patrons. How did we manage to avoid mass injuries and deaths at previous World Cups when there weren't such restrictions? For that matter, how do many of us poor cossetted souls manage to get out of bed, cross the road or stick our face in a fan without dire injury?

April 2, 2007

A quagmire of issues

Posted on 04/02/2007 in World Cup 2007

It’s an almost constant gripe in the media – not to mention those attending the games - but the organisation of this World Cup appears to have set a all-time low. In The Guardian, Mike Selvey flags the issues he experienced in Antigua on Saturday. One has to assume that the ICC has stopped reading the daily deluge of criticism …

Ground security makes Checkpoint Charlie look like a farm gate and is a constant irritant for those who take advantage of park-and-ride that leaves cars several miles away from a greenfield site with huge unused parking space. Once in, spectators are stuck: exit passes are not issued, another rankle when they are forced to wait five hours for play to start. Others, largely from abroad, have been forced to purchase blocks of tickets for extraneous matches which they are unable to attend if they want to attend the final. So the ICC has the revenue in the kitty and issues "sold out" statements while viewing the empty spaces.

April 1, 2007

A cup diminished by greed

Posted on 04/01/2007 in World Cup 2007

	© Getty Images

You have to feel for the poor old ICC. Hard as it tries, almost every aspect of the World Cup has come under fire. In fairness, it wasn’t its fault that India and Pakistan were eliminated, but everything else takes some explaining …

In The Observer, Vic Marks doesn’t hold back, and points out it’s worse in reality that it seems to TV viewers:

Television helps to disguise some of the flaws of the tournament. In between overs we can watch the tourist trailers of sun, white sand and azure seas, which are more pleasing to the eye than some of the building sites outside the grounds. More important, the cameras can be turned away from row upon row of empty seats in brand new stands.

The pricing structure here verges on the scandalous and highlights what is increasingly becoming a cancer for the modern game - rampant commercialism, which was once known more simply as greed. In Guyana, one of the poorer nations in the world, the cheapest ticket for a place on the grass is US$25 (£12.60). It can cost up to $100 for a seat.

Not only is this pricing structure greedy, it is stupid. Someone has made a major miscalculation when applying the old economic law of supply and demand. This is, inevitably, a TV World Cup - that is where the money comes from - and the TV product has been diminished. Not even the most skillful producer can hide those empty stands and the lack of atmosphere for eight hours a day.

In the Mail On Sunday, Daniel King also takes a pop at the prices:

It will be no more than the organisers deserve if the home team’s exit from the competition ... plunges the box office into deeper crisis. The cheapest ticket at grounds across the West Indies is $25, or around £13, which is just about the average weekly wage of someone working in the sugar industry in Guyana. Malcolm Speed, chief executive of the International Cricket Council, is once more in Pontius Pilate mode. He said: ‘We had to rely on the advice of the local organising committee to establish the prices of the tickets. It is, in retrospect, a little too rich for the local palate'.

In Saturday’s Daily Telegraph, Martin Johnson railed against the seemingly never-ending competition.

This World Cup is so bloated that if the Sky commentary team decided not to shave for its duration, they'd all come home with the kind of beards that would make WG Grace's resemble teenage bum fluff. There was some nonsensical blather about needing 47 days to find a winner to give the players plenty of rest, but the real reason is to keep the tills jingling for as long as possible.

And he’s not any more enamoured with the quality of TV commentary.

There are several excellent ones, and no one is better at conveying tactics and what might be taking place in a fielding captain's head than Nasser Hussain. On the other hand, there are some so-called expert summarisers, mostly with a delivery like the Speaking Clock, who specialise in the bleeding obvious.

In this field, leading by a short head from Ramiz Raja is Ranjit Fernando. Batsman plays and misses. "He nearly hit that ball, but he really didn't make contact." Batsman hits just short of fielder. "That ball was in the air for a while, but it didn't quite reach the fielder." Much more of this and there'll be no one watching on the TV either.

In The Jamaica Gleaner, the respected Tony Becca agrees:

According to the visitors, they heard about cricket in the Caribbean, they saw cricket in the Caribbean on television, they saved to come and enjoy cricket in the Caribbean and, now that they are here, cricket in the Caribbean for whatever reason, is not what they expected it to be. Here's what one Englishman said to another at the end of the first day of the West Indies/Australia match: "It is like watching cricket at Lord's. It's no bloody different."

Maybe it is too late to do something about it, but regardless of what the organisers say, the World Cup is hurting, and it is hurting, not only from the manner in which the tickets were sold to the locals, not only from the false announcements that matches were sold out, not only from the trouble, from the pushing and shoving that people have to go through now to get tickets, and not only from the fact that in terms of their music the Caribbean has been silenced, but also from the price they have to pay, or had to pay, to enter the matches.

March 26, 2007

Greed blinds ICC to right choice

Posted on 03/26/2007 in ICC

In a no-holds-barred column in The Daily Telegraph, Mark Nicholas has launched a stinging broadside at the ICC and the way it handles the world game, which, he says, is based on greed overruling good sense.

“It is a cliche to say that the ICC are toothless. Often this is so because, as a deeply political body, they choose to be. The list of unanswered questions is an embarrassment. Corruption, throwing, ball-tampering, doping, cheating and the use of technology, Zimbabwe, Darrell Hair and the Oval Test, are all issues over which the ICC have come to no firm conclusion.”

And as for the terrible murder of Bob Woolmer, Nicholas is not even sure that will be satisfactorily sorted.

“Cricket and cricketers live in their own vacuum. Visitors are amazed by the size and breadth of the clique. Sometimes this makes us blind. Already there is a view that the case will be swept beneath the veil of the clique, perhaps even that "murder" will become "accident" in some form or another. Certainly, commentators already feel that a scapegoat will be found elsewhere.”

March 24, 2007

In the grip of the Asian betting mafia

Posted on 03/24/2007 in Betting/Corruption

In The Daily Telegraph, Peter Foster looks at the bookmakers who still stalk cricket, seven years after the ICC set about rooting corruption out of the game.

From the back-streets of Karachi and Mumbai to the gleaming towers of Hong Kong and Dubai, cricket's bookmaking underworld is still operating. Chief among those nations are the sub-continental rivals of India and Pakistan where, despite betting on cricket being illegal, millions of pounds regularly change hands over a single game. Annually, the profits can be counted in billions.

But the nature of gambling has changed, forced to adapt from the brash efforts to influence entire teams to a far more subtle approach.

It makes grim reading. In the same paper, Simon Hughes gives a first-hand report from the subcontinent.

On a trip to Pakistan some years ago, I stopped by an anonymous club match one afternoon. Two batsmen were slowly playing themselves in. After one apparently featureless over, a gaggle of spectators suddenly engaged in an unseemly scuffle. When some time had elapsed and peace was restored, I ventured over to investigate what had happened. It emerged that one man had bet another the over would be a maiden. When a leg-bye was run off the last ball of the over, they couldn't agree who had won the wager (despite the extra it still constituted a maiden) and fists flew.

Cricket never was the English Eden

Posted on 03/24/2007 in World Cup 2007

Michael Henderson, never one to take the safe option, writes a long article in The Daily Telegraph on Pakistan cricket and its place in the modern game.

“While India have the money to confront the old order, the Pakistanis like to portray themselves as maligned outsiders, an image their players have reinforced in the past three years by favouring a hard-line Islamic faith.”

And he finishes with a swipe at the ICC and its reaction to calls for the tournament to be scrapped.

“The ICC will disregard him, of course, arguing that the show must always go on, if only to avoid shelling out millions to compensate the television companies covering this bloated tournament.”

March 18, 2007

Test return will harm Zimbabwe

Posted on 03/18/2007 in Zimbabwe cricket

Amid all the celebrations at Ireland’s fightback to tie with Zimbabwe last Thursday, what many overlooked was that the result was another major blow to Zimbabwean cricket. A Test nation, with an income from the ICC of many millions of dollars, should not be humbled by part-timers … although Pakistan showed two days later that lightning can strike twice.

In The Sunday Telegraph, Sycld Berry argues that restoring Zimbabwe’s Test status in November – which is what the Zimbabwe board are telling anyone that will listen will happen – would not only be bad for the game but also bad for the standing of the sport inside the country itself.

Quite apart from the ethics involved in allowing a nation which has Robert Mugabe for head of state to participate in the world community, Zimbabwe seem to be even more unfit for Test cricket now than when they were suspended.

The last of Zimbabwe's Tests was one of their better performances too: they lost by no greater margin than 10 wickets. Their previous seven Tests against countries other than Bangladesh were all lost by an innings and large amounts of runs, South Africa winning one Test in two days.

If the ICC want to help, the world body should organise and fund three years of competitive cricket for these Zimbabwean cricketers. They need to gain the experience of winning; they need a batting and bowling role-model in their side to learn from, and that can only mean an overseas player unless Streak returns. Being plunged again into the deep end of Test cricket from November will do them vastly more harm than good.

February 16, 2007

China ... the fragile reality

Posted on 02/16/2007 in ICC

	Robin Marlar watches MCC take on United Beijing during the London club's first tour of China © Getty Images

Matthew Pryor in The Times take a look at the reality behind stories that cricket is about to take off in China:-

Thus far, many of the clichéd reports of cricket gripping the Chinese have been just that — the truth has been much more fragile. But as they say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and there has been genuine movement in the past two years.

Malcom Speed, never a man to miss an opportunity for massive new markets for the game has his own thoughts.

“There’s been a very good start in China …this is a ten-year project and no one should be under any illusion that results will appear overnight.”

But Robin Marlar, who as president of MCC led a club tour there last year, makes clear that the state, as with most walks of life, is in control and wants to remain that way.

“The Chinese Government want to keep the two streams apart. For them it is politically essential. They want it to become their game, not an expat game.”

And, Marlar asked, what about the lack of coaches?

“They [the Chinese officials] said, ‘Don’t worry, we will take them into camp for three months’ and when I pressed the point they said it may well be six months. That is how they launched table tennis and swimming, in which they now excel. They just did it. The potential is enormous.”

January 12, 2007

Is Twenty20 now 50-50 proposition?

Posted on 01/12/2007 in Twenty20

	© Getty Images

There’s a certain irony in that the latest broadside against Twenty20 cricket comes from Australia, the country which took one-day cricket, made it a modern product with coloured clothing, white balls and floodlights … and then flogged it to death with endless round-robin series which left players exhausted and airlines counting the cash. In The Australian, Mike Coward is less than impressed with the new format:

What purpose does it fill in the international arena other than providing the ICC with another dedicated event it can call its own?

So much for the joy of the traditional game and the apparent re-establishment of the Ashes as the game's iconic series: that was eight days ago. Since Ponting and his team-mates held up the Waterford Crystal trophy - rather than the actual urn which, for the moment, is on display at the Melbourne Cricket Club's new museum at the MCG - there have been 10 Twenty20 matches around the country, including the international won by Australia over England at the SCG on Tuesday. Yesterday the 50-over format got under way and the domestic Twenty20 final is on today. Roll up. Roll up.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Philip Derriman looks at the way the game has grabbed a large - and fresh - audience:

The TV audience for Tuesday's match against England, which averaged 2.31 million and peaked at 2.81 million, was an all-time record for any kind of cricket match in Australia. Previously, the biggest audience was the one that tuned in to last year's Twenty20 match against South Africa. Its average audience was 2.18 million.

To judge from the fans at the SCG on Tuesday night, the audience was young as well as big. When at one point during the telecast Ian Healy wandered into a section of the grandstand with his microphone, he looked to be the only one over 21.

Healy had the following exchange with a pony-tailed girl of around 11 years old: Did you come to the Test match? No. Did your dad? Yes. Are you thinking you might come to the one-day matches now? Maybe. Or just stick with Twenty20? Twenty20!

December 19, 2006

Australia's success bad for Test cricket

Posted on 12/19/2006 in Australian cricket

While most Australians celebrate the return of the Ashes, Chloe Saltau in the Age sounds a warning that Australia’s renewed dominance is a bad thing for the long-term future of Test cricket. And the paper is clear that the blame for that can be laid at the feet of the ICC and the incompetent way it continues to handle world cricket.

Hold the champagne, if only for a moment. As the frail Ashes urn is escorted across the country to Melbourne, and Australia's cricketers wake rather dustily from their richly deserved series victory celebrations, it is worth considering what it means for world cricket if the second-best team in the world can be so comprehensively slaughtered by the best, as England have been by Australia in 15 days of cricket.

October 8, 2006

India bid for world domination

Posted on 10/08/2006 in ICC

	Excitement mounts over TV rights © Martin Williamson

Scyld Berry in The Sunday Telegraph warns that the Indian board wants it all and, what’s more, it has the financial clout to be able to gobble it up. The article followed the recent revelation that the Indian board has expressed their interest in buying the ICC’s broadcasting rights to ICC events for the next eight years.

As such a move would be unprecedented in the history of cricket, the implications of India owning the broadcasting rights to ICC events are impossible to specify exactly. The main events in the cricket calendar over the next eight years – notably the World Cups of 2011 and 2015, the Champions Trophy tournaments and the new Twenty20 World Championships – have already been decided. But conflicts of interest and issues of governance would be bound to arise as, in effect, a limb would be taking over control of the body.

At present, in the Champions Trophy, the arbitrary, last-minute way that Indian officials can act is being illustrated. Two days before the tournament began, one of the main venues, Mohali on the outskirts of Chandigarh, announced that it would refuse to host all five of its matches if compensation for any losses was not paid by the ICC. And the 'king of Mohali', the president of the Punjab Cricket Association, is Inderjit Singh Bindra, India's joint representative on the ICC.

October 5, 2006

Will he keep bobbing up like a bad hair day?

Posted on 10/05/2006 in ICC

R Mohan, writing in the Deccan Chronicle, wonders how the ICC let off Darrell Hair so easily, the man at the centre of the ball-tampering row at The Oval:

There have been too many holes in the manner in which the so-called elite umpiring system has been run by a section of the ICC. The Hair imbroglio is a rare instance in which it got its comeuppance. And it was not Asian money and clout that swung the verdict this time as much as the blatant unfairness of one man’s actions being exposed cruelly by expert witnesses and the forensic examination of the ball in question.

October 2, 2006

ICC ... the real villains

Posted on 10/02/2006 in ICC

	© Getty Images

The ICC has come under fire at the weekend for its handling of the row that followed the Oval Test.

The weekend newspapers were almost universally critical of the way the whole episode was dealt with, and while there was not much sympathy for Darrell Hair’s on-field actions, there was concern about the way the ICC has treated him.

Leading the assault was Michael Atherton in The Sunday Telegraph. he wrote that the affair:

Showed the ICC at their worst: prevaricating, in that a judgment which should have been handed out on the fourth evening of the game was allowed to fester for a month; callous, when it revealed confidential e-mails from an employee; and ultimately fudging a verdict so as not to upset the key players in this very political game – the Asian bloc.

When the big issue arose, the ICC official froze. Woe-betide anyone who walks out to bat with a logo half an inch too big, mind you. Moreover, shortly after the ICC announced that Hair had been withdrawn from the Champions Trophy because of security concerns, India, the host country, flatly contradicted the game's chiefs. Who is being open and honest?

Continue reading " ICC ... the real villains"

September 27, 2006

ICC facing recipe for anarchy

Posted on 09/27/2006 in Pakistan in England

	© Daily Telegraph

As the cricket world’s attention heads back to The Oval – and not even with the badly-scheduled 2004 Champions Trophy was the old ground in the headlines so late in the year – the speculation and rumour surrounding events five weeks ago continues to keep the media busy.

Today, a report by Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times claims that Inzamam did not act on his own in refusing to resume play after tea but was persuaded by others.

The refusal to take the field may not have been his idea but that of Waqar Younis, the touring team’s bowling coach, or one of the other senior figures in or around the Pakistan dressing-room at the time, The source said that Waqar, who was suspended and fined in 2000 when found guilty of changing the condition of the ball by a referee in Colombo, took Inzamam into the lavatory for a secret discussion at the start of the tea interval, from which point the situation spiralled out of control.

Continue reading "ICC facing recipe for anarchy"

August 29, 2006

ICC call off meeting after reverse swing

Posted on 08/29/2006 in ICC

Percy Sonn’s first few weeks at the helm of the ICC has hardly seen him at his best, and now according to Mihir Bose in The Daily Telegraph, he is to blame for events surrounding the aborted executive board meeting of the ICC.

“Sonn has only himself to blame for this latest fiasco. He had called the meeting on Friday because, as he put it, he wanted ‘to seek legal advice concerning the executive board's powers.’

“But this set in motion a tide of intense speculation on whether the executive board have the authority to overturn a properly laid charge by the umpires. That speculation would only be sure to intensify ahead of the weekend, so cancelling the meeting will allow everyone to focus on the cricket instead.”

July 4, 2006

ICC bunks off a Greek lesson

Posted on 07/04/2006 in ICC

The ICC might like to take a leaf out of FIFA’s book – and that’s not something we ever thought would be written here. The endless protestations about not being able to get involved in domestic issues which the ICC wield like an invisibility cloak whenever anyone mentions Zimbabwe have been put into context by FIFA’s suspension of Greece because of excessive government control in the sport.

The Daily Telegraph reported that FIFA acted because the Greek government had exerted levels of interference “not in line with the principles of the FIFA statutes regarding the independence of member associations and the independence of the decision-making process of the football-governing body in each country."

Compared with the shenanigans surrounding the politiciasation of the Zimbabwe board, the Greeks are pussycats. The difference is that those who run the global game are not prepared to sit and look in the other direction.

June 21, 2006

Is it really 'for the good for the game'?

Posted on 06/21/2006 in ICC

Food for thought for the ICC. An article in The New Yorker, talks about why governing bodies of international sport often turn out so badly. It’s subject is FIFA, football’s kindly ruler which is currently under the media spotlight after various allegations were made by the BBC.

“It rules impartially, concerned only with “the good of the game,” as the organisation likes to say … [but] “the good of the game” seems to get subordinated to the good of FIFA. Why, when global governing bodies have such noble aims, are the results so consistently bad?

“Since Blatter [FIFA’s president] took office, FIFA has channelled tens of millions of dollars in grants to developing countries to promote soccer, while seeming not to pay too much attention to how the money gets spent. Perhaps coincidentally, this tends to make representatives from these countries very grateful, and very unwilling to change the status quo.”

No-one is suggesting that the ICC is anything like FIFA, but it is a warning of how things can go so very awry, even when the original intentions are good.

May 8, 2006

ICC tinkering could blight club cricket

Posted on 05/08/2006 in ICC

The ICC's latest initiative on the use of technology, especially the move to allow players to challenge decisions by on-field umpires, was put forward last week by its cricket committee. But Angus Fraser, who sits on that committee, wrote in his column in The Independent that he had reservations.

"The biggest fear over the proposed system is the effect it will have on "The Spirit of Cricket", the fabric of the game and the role and authority of the on-field umpire. It will undoubtedly encourage players to challenge the decisions of umpires at lower levels of the game."

He raised one other potential issue:

"Disciplining international players for their reaction to a decision will also be hard because the prospect of appealing gives them the opportunity to hang around for a period of time before walking off."

April 28, 2006

Bedi accuses ICC of killing the golden goose

Posted on 04/28/2006 in ICC

Bishan Bedi, never short of an opinion, has joined the debate about player burnout, as reported on deepikaglobal.com. And he is clear where the blame lies - with the ICC.

"Both the individual boards and the ICC have to take the responsibility but I feel ICC is the main culprit because they are the ones who decide the schedules. In their efforts to provide more matches for teams like Bangladesh they are making top teams like India and Australia play more."

And he concluded:

"The administrators just have to apply common sense and balance out the number of games. After all you wouldn't want to kill the golden goose, would you?"

Many argue the goose is already well and truly slughtered.

March 3, 2006

Give fans what they want

Posted on 03/03/2006 in ICC

Andrew Ramsey says that the increasing amount of international cricket is threatening the careers of the games major stars.

Such is the volume of cricket being scheduled around the globe these days that the rate at which players are being injured is beginning to resemble that usually associated with contact sports such as rugby union, rugby league and Australian football.

March 2, 2006

Ask Speed

Posted on 03/02/2006 in ICC

ICC big cheese Malcolm Speed has engaged in a Q&A session with readers of the UK's Guardian newspaper. Among other things, Speed talks about Zimbabwe, his favourite innings (Garry Sobers's 254 at the MCG in 1971-72) and Twenty20 cricket:

Fifty-over one-day international cricket is a highly popular format with players, fans, broadcasters and sponsors around the world. Twenty20 cricket certainly has a role to play. We are in the process of determining exactly what that will be but we think it will complement 50-over cricket rather than replace it.

December 16, 2005

Drip-feed of drivel masks the real contest

Posted on 12/16/2005 in ICC

Greg Baum in the Melbourne Age on pre-match blithering, which traditionally lacks spontaneity and grace. So why, he ponmders, has the ICC given it credence:

The "war of words" is predictable, well rehearsed, lame and boring. It is a ritual, a cliche. It serves no purpose other than to while away the hours until the series begins. It is hard to know why the ICC bothered. Its crackdown has invested it with a gravity it is not due.

He concluded:

The war of words is a phoney. With exceptions, sportsfolk get along well enough most of the time. Spats happen, as they must, but they are superseded by events. The war of words is pseudo, a fake, an exercise in marketing. Call it off and let the real game begin.

And an editorial in South Africa's Business Day is thankful that criticism is aimed in another direction:

It’s nice to see a torrent of Australian abuse (sledging) being directed at someone other than SA for a change — and a collective someone who truly deserves it. That someone I allude to is, of course, the International Cricket Council, or ICC as most of us know that bunch of distracted disconnected people now sitting in Dubai rather than London.

But Peter Roebuck praises the ICC for stepping in:

The only body with the guts to call a halt has been that most derided of institutions, the ICC. Everyone else has been busily fanning the flames in the manner of men — it is usually men — unaware of their responsibilities.

December 9, 2005

Akram on the ICC

Posted on 12/09/2005 in ICC

Wasim Akram is clearly not happy with the ICC. He believes more former players from the subcontinent should have a role in running the game.

My objection is that why players like Imran Khan and Kapil Dev do not get the top job in ICC?