D-day for India tour decision
BCCI and CSA are set to thrash out issue at ICC board meeting in London
THE ICC board meeting in London today and tomorrow will be the stage for the endgame in the showdown between India and SA.
THE International Cricket Council (ICC) board meeting in London today and tomorrow will be the stage for the endgame in the showdown between India and SA.
They promise to be a tense couple of days for Cricket SA (CSA), which is set to come under fire from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which believes it has been slighted in advance of India’s tour to SA this summer.
CSA CE Haroon Lorgat was not part of the delegation that went to Mumbai at the weekend to try to save the tour but he will accompany CSA president Chris Nenzani in London. Lorgat will thus be braced for a confrontation with a man who detests him, BCCI president Narayanaswami Srinivasan.
CSA lead independent director Norman Arendse was in Mumbai but CSA said yesterday that he would not be in London.
Arendse is the sharpest, most hard-nosed member of CSA’s board but he has never been good at accepting unfairness — and if CSA is to rescue the tour it will have to show willingness to jump through whatever hoops the BCCI cares to set before it.
The Indians’ unhappiness over what they claim was CSA’s release, without their agreement, of the fixtures for the tour was, presumably, dealt with in Mumbai.
That meeting is thought to have made enough progress for the boards to debate whether India would play two Tests and three oneday internationals — the most likely scenario — or three Tests.
But Lorgat appears to be the obstacle to CSA and the BCCI repairing their once firm friendship.
Some insiders say he will be put on leave during India’s tour, others say nothing less than his dismissal would satisfy the BCCI. The uncompromising reality is that CSA must appease the Indians given an international cricket economy that depends on the BCCI for 70% of its revenue.
The BCCI will also ask CSA what former ICC legal affairs head David Becker — who now advises CSA — was thinking when he released a statement last week that stopped just short of accusing Srinivasan of cor- ruption. The Indians might also want to know what CSA hoped to accomplish by trying to delay publication of Becker’s views until after the Mumbai meeting — did they think the BCCI would be any less upset? — and why they tried to offer reporters compensatory information in return for making that bargain.
In the end, CSA might have a tour schedule to announce and the BCCI is unlikely to object this time.