Email
Like truth and war in the old saw, balance is the first casualty of the rush to publish. Last week a group of journalists received leaked copies of a draft report drawn up by senior members of the England Cricket Board, the Board of Control for Cricket in India and Cricket Australia mapping out a radical restructuring of international cricket. The story, as you may have seen by now, was sold as an attempt by those three boards to take control of the game and secure themselves a larger cut of future revenues at the expense of the seven remaining full members of the International Cricket Council. Which was the line that the email leaking the documents urged the journalists to take.
Since then we've suffered a surfeit of opinion and a shortage of information in the public discourse about what is, after all, only a draft, albeit one that has been six months in the making. We've heard from everyone except anyone in a position to explain exactly what the thinking behind this is, and what the effects are likely to be. We may get that on 29 January, when the three chairmen, Giles Clarke, Wally Edwards and N Srinivasan, will give a press conference after the ICC meeting to discuss the proposal and decide whether or not to implement any or all of it.
At first it was best to step back if you wanted to avoid the lash of legs snapping up after kneejerk reactions from people who, in the main, hadn't read the draft, or spoken to the people who wrote it. Scepticism is an essential quality when dealing with administrators harbouring grand designs, but the blind cynicism that assumes they are only out to serve their own interests is no more accurate than unquestioning trust that they are acting with the purest of intentions. Those who judged the document by the early headlines may be surprised to find that its primary aim is, ostensibly, to "ensure Test cricket remains the primary form of the game".
Since then, more measured responses have emerged. Gideon Haigh and Harsha Bhogle have both written balanced pieces, which attempt to weigh both the good and bad of the proposal. So, the debate is under way. New Zealand have come out in cautious support. "I need to stress," said the New Zealand Cricket director Martin Snedden, "there's nothing wrong with India, Australia and England working together to produce something for everyone. Don't jump to the conclusion what they're doing is not good for world cricket." Other boards have done exactly that. The Pakistan Cricket Board have made it clear that they will oppose the reforms, while Cricket South Africa president Chris Nenzani has described the process as "fundamentally flawed" and called for a "more considered, inclusive" approach. The South Africans are right to feel sore. They may be the best Test team in the world, but they have been left out of this and even excluded from the list of countries who would benefit from the proposed Test cricket fund.
The one thing everybody, even CSA, can agree on is that the ICC isn't working. The draft is, at least, an official acknowledgment that change is necessary, and that, as in all things, is the first step towards recovery. The ICC has proved to be constitutionally incapable of providing the leadership needed. So, in the words of the proposal, "the leading countries of India, England and Australia have agreed that they will provide greater leadership at and of the ICC". Some quail at those words. Small wonder the boards inspire such little faith when one has recently been embroiled in an investigation into match-fixing, another coined the concept of "cricketainment", and the last was once in league with Allen Stanford.
If not them, then who? The current model has failed, and the ideas set out in the Woolf report, which called for independent governance, have already been rejected. The boards in Pakistan and Sri Lanka are both subject to political interference, and it was only in October 2012 that CSA sacked their chief executive Gerald Majola after he was found guilty of financial misconduct. His replacement, Haroon Lorgat, is bound up in an interminable argument with the BCCI, which, ugly a truth as this is, makes his position all but untenable.
The proposal aims to bind India, who provide 80% of the revenue, to the ICC by rewarding them with more power and more money, both of which they see, not without reason, as their due. The broad principle behind that move is that if India, Australia, and England are allowed sufficient control to create the best possible package for the next sale of ICC TV rights, then everyone will benefit from the additional money that will ensue, which will be used, among other things, to create a Test cricket fund to support the game in other countries. Trebles all round, you might say.
Those who would instinctively oppose the proposal may find, on closer inspection, much they agree with, and certainly an enhanced understanding of the difficulties the game is facing. Take the suggestion that Test cricket should be split into two divisions of eight. Every four years, the bottom team of the first division would play off against the top team of the second division over a pair of two-game series, home and away, to decide promotion and relegation. So those who want to see Ireland, Afghanistan and other nations given an opportunity to regular cricket against better opposition have their wish. And each would also have the chance to win promotion to the top tier.
At the same time, India, England, and Australia would all be ring-fenced, guaranteed against relegation. Much as that concept may stick in the craw, it is inevitable if promotion and relegation is going to be introduced. Try selling TV companies, never mind the public, on the idea that they might go four or eight years without an Ashes series because one of the two nations is in the second division. Promotion/relegation is an idea worth exploring, then, but one beset by difficulties and which, if it is to come to pass, will necessarily involve more compromise than anyone thinks is ideal. In that sense it is emblematic of much of the rest of the proposal.
For a long time the cry has been "something must be done!" Now, at last, it is. And the cry has become 'they must be stopped!' It is a rash mind that rushes to sign a petition to scrap the plans before they have even been explained, let alone discussed or implemented. Better, surely, to seize on the aspects of the proposal that work and debate those that don't, rather than scotch the whole thing, then stand back and hope for a perfect solution that is never going to come.
This is an extract taken from The Spin, the Guardian's weekly cricket email. Sign up here
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