As the season draws to a close, how has your side done?
Tim Wigmore’s weekly look at the game below the Test-playing nations
Cricket is a great game. It deserves to have governance, including management and ethics, worthy of the sport. This is not the position at the present time. So declared Lord Woolf, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, four years ago, when commissioned to do an independent report into how the ICC was run, and chart a course for the future.
So, naturally, Australia, England and India colluded to do the exact opposite. In 2014, the Big Three decided to hoard more power and cash for themselves and, in the process, showed contempt for the notion of either expanding the game or adopting independent governance: the two, of course, are intertwined.
In recent months, there has been a slow unwinding of some of the egregious reforms of 2014: the ICC now has an independent chairman, at long last, and the Big Three have lost their permanent positions on the crucial decision-making committees in the ICC.
Thanks to new ICC chairman Shashank Manohar and signs of enlightened thinking from many cricket boards, including Australia and England, big hopes have emerged for the global game. It can do more than simply bumble along, and be run shambolically.
Rather, cricket nations could come together, to recognise the profound problems facing the game: the lack of any coherent structure in bilateral cricket, which is putting off fans and leading to commercial partners stumping up less cash; the paucity of competitive teams, in an age when rugby, which has a similar colonial footprint, has a 20-team World Cup and is leaving cricket behind; and the absence of an enlightened structure for pooling the wealth that international cricket generates.
Meaningful action could replace inertia.
Now, these hopes face being dashed. Again. This week, the boards have met in Dubai to discuss the ICC’s plans to reform the structure of cricket, principally a pooling of broadcasting rights for bilater- al matches, and introducing two divisions in Test cricket. But instead of enlightened reform, what has transpired is internecine squabbling, a return to the days of voting blocs and short-termism.
The history of cricket governance has almost always been shameful. Incredibly, Australia and England each held a veto in the ICC until 1993: either nation could block any proposals they believed did not follow their interests, and their conservatism and selfishness held back the growth of the sport.
In the following years, voting blocs – principally the Asian countries, plus Zimbabwe, who always did as India said, against the rest – developed; boards would vote depending on which side they were on, not what was best for global cricket. Bangladesh were awarded full membership in 2000, even though Kenya had won five of the six ODIs between the two nations. “You do not have 100 million people,” an ICC official told a member of the Kenyan board when he highlighted the inequity of the situation.
Zimbabwe retained their full voting rights and funding even when their side became such a mess that they suspended themselves from Test cricket for six years – but they invariably did as they were told.
And then, worst of all, came the Big Three reforms of 2014: the richest three nations, who generated far more cash from their bilateral deals than anyone else, now received more ICC revenue than the other 102 countries combined. Remarkably, about half of the ICC’s 105 members were being made worse off just as the ICC had more cash than ever: the poor were being impoverished to make the rich richer. They still are.
All of which brings us back to this week’s ICC meeting. Two of the Big Three, Australia and England, were prepared to give up some ICC cash to support other nations. The two, along with New Zealand, Pakistan and South Africa also advocate two division in Test cricket, of seven and five, with no exemptions from relegation. Finally there would have been a dose of meritocracy.
Now it seems not. Anurag Thakur, Manohar’s replacement as Indian Board of Control president, is against the reforms: the pooling of broadcasting rights; giving back some of the BCCI’s inordinate share of ICC cash; and two divisions.
Thakur says he opposes divisions to protect smaller nations. This is risible. Test cricket already has two divisions, even if it doesn’t admit it: Zimbabwe have played two Tests since the end of 2014; Bangladesh play fewer than three Tests a year against the leading eight nations. Michael Clarke played 57 of his 115 Tests against India or England, showing how iniquitous the scheduling of Test cricket is, governed by the short-term buck.
The coalition combining to stop two divisions – India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, who fear going down to the second tier – say they are looking after the smaller countries.Yet none of these countries make any mention of the needs of the 95 Associate nations. There are no principles here, just grubby self-interest.
In 1962, the club owners in American Football came together to discuss how to distribute TV revenue. The Giants, one of the richest franchises who could have stood to demand plenty more than most other clubs, argued that “the NFL was only as strong as its weakest link,” as their commissioner at the time later said. The NFL remains a model of competitiveness – every team has a fighting chance.
For as long as international cricket fails to do the same, then the quality of sport will diminish, as smaller nations don’t have enough cash to invest in development and coaching and their best players retire prematurely, because they can earn far more in domestic cricket. And ultimately the risk is not just of fans turning to domestic T20 leagues instead of international cricket, but of them abandoning the game for other sports altogether.
Woolf was right: cricket is indeed a great game. But, too often, it is still run by the wrong people.
The NFL remains a model of competitiveness. For as long as international fails to do the same the quality of sport will diminish