A World Fund for Cricket: The saviour of our noble game?

Nigel Kerner

E-mail : Nigel Kerner

My proposal for a World Fund for Cricket has drawn so much interest and so many questions. I have been asked to make clearer some of my own ideas and for my opinion on how I see the details of the whole thing working out. I would like to make clear that I am just a single opinion, amongst a billion equally valid ones, but for what it is worth, this is how I would personally hope the fund would run. I have no financial or positional interest in furthering the idea. It is simply just that - an idea.

The World Fund for Cricket is a simple means for ensuring the financial survival of the game into the far future, providing the necessary infrastructure required in every cricket playing country, keeping corruption within the game to a minimum, and giving every cricket fan around the world the chance of holding an equal and nominal `shareholding' in the entire aegis of world cricket. As nominal shareholders - `cricket fans' would be designated an emblem, which will give him the right to attend any match, at any time, played in any cricket playing country. This emblem may be called the `World Cricket Pass' and could be bought by the poorest of the poor, and the richest of the rich, for a mere $5.00 US, or whatever country equivalent. They could buy one perhaps at any local newsagent or sweetshop.

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The idea is that the future cricketers of the world - the adult or child in the poorest situation in the poorest regions of the world, and those from the richest backgrounds - are nominal equals in the support and enhancement of the great game, for the cheapest possible cost. The size of the cricket fan base is so large that a mere $5.00 stipend could be afforded by all and would provide enough money, estimated as large as (US$ 5 billion) per annum, to make cricket the richest game in the world and ensure a fair dispersal and remuneration for everyone who plays and administers it.

As things stand, privilege measured in fiscal or societal terms usually determines who sits at a ground and watches a match. Even in India where tickets seem to be the cheapest. The occupants of air-conditioned stands and boxes, where those who can afford cucumber sandwiches and lace doilies in their picnic baskets, too often determine the most important things in the furtherance and practice of the game.

I would hope that the world body that runs cricket, the ICC, will run the Fund and is capable of installing simple administrative and managerial procedures for the fair collection of funds, and the disbursement of these funds and various entitlements to all the cricket playing nations of the world.

The World Cricket Fund administrators, be they the ICC or an organisation specially set up to run it, ought to be made to ensure that the World Cricket Pass would admit any fan holding a valid one, to any match, anywhere in the world, at any time. In other words a New Zealand cricket fan holding a WCF pass would be able to walk into any match played in the West Indies, while he is there, and a West Indian could do likewise if he happens to be in New Zealand. This is crucial. In my view it should not demarcate matches, places, or times, because all games will benefit hugely and singularly from the fund. I would like 80% of the stand space in any ground reserved for World Cricket Pass holders and it should be on a first come first served basis. This will ensure no favourites and courtiers get preferential treatment simply because they can afford it or `know someone' and that the ordinary fan who's collective money power runs the engine, and most of the car of the fund, will get, and be seen to get, the benefit of it all. It will, I hope, ensure that every seat so often seen empty at so many non Test matches will be filled by perhaps the young future aspiring stars of cricket, who will be able to see the game first hand, and judge the stature of its craft, its pace and most importantly, judge its various dynamic vectors, first hand, and thus more accurately than through the distorting lenses and perspectives that television provides. For instance, a cricket ball is heavy and in reality moves much slower than you might think, watching television. A cricket pitch is much smaller in reality than you gauge it to be when you see it on a TV screen. Most of all, your heroes on the green baize, just yards in front of you, seem more human-sized and thus, perhaps, more endearing. An on the site, real time view of any sport is, as most of us know, the best and most exciting and inspiring of experiences.

Some people might balk at the idea that the entitlement to see any match should be so cheap and on a first come first served basis. They see chaos ensuing with so many fans wanting to get in and not being able to do so, because of limited seating capacity. Whilst this is true, it is a situation that can be managed. With good intelligent thinking and organisation. The true fan is well directed and determined and will get there as early as possible to ensure he gets a seat. He or she will ensure that the maximum is done to get to their goal. Besides, the huge funds available, if the WCF comes about, will ensure the building of larger more comfortable stands based on well researched interest value gradients. We would be able to build much more to the reality of the fan base. A lottery similar to the one that allocates tickets to the public for the Wimbledon Tennis Championships might be a way of deciding the allocation of seats at Test matches, till the extended stand facilities are built at the various Test venues. Of course many will still be disappointed at not being able to get in to a particular match in a particular ground. No venue can meet all demands neither can all aspirations to see particular matches be met. That will always be the case.

I balk against a reservation charge for important matches, though I acknowledge it might have to come, because the reservation charge will inevitably get far larger than the price of the world cricket pass and the selection then will come down to the size of one's purse.

Of course, there will always be those who can afford to pay to ensure a seat and there will be reservable seats in glorious `cucumber comfort' for the rich and comfortably off to buy their way into anything. Cricket is no exception and should cater for all of society's hallmarks. However, the Sri Lankan example of coming from nowhere with no Cricket Academies and no fancy facilities and infrastructure and taking the World Cup showed us all that the talent to do this is what is important and that usually comes from the less privileged, the less fortunate in the social stitching that makes up a nation. It is out there in the paddy field and broken piece of land. It is in the drapery of the human heart and mind and rich or poor, it will always be there. Alas it is the truly poor portion as seen in the Indian sub-continent that needs the supplemental aid to ensure that the lack of money is no bar to the propagation and maintenance of talent. Talent belongs to us all. However, or wherever, it is manifested it is a universal glory that enriches all of us equally. Every cricket fan who has seen a Sobers, Viv Richards, Tendulkar, Jayasuriya or Lara bat, knows what exciting glories might lurk around the most humble back-yard. Privilege can be grown and earned, or unfairly endowed. Talent just happens.

As I see it, the `World Cricket Fund' or `World Fund For Cricket', or whatever you might call it, ought not to be a source of controversy. I am myself no management expert, nor have I pretensions to any expertise in cricket administration whatsoever. I am just a simple fan among the hundreds of millions of fellow fans out there that love and cherish the game called Cricket.

I have been asked where and how I got the idea for all this. I got it from watching the little ones on the island of Sri Lanka playing some of the finest straight batted strokes I have seen. Playing them in the middle of the public road, as my 4WD came round a hundred corners. I got it from seeing their rough hewn coconut wood bats whacking their not quite round rough latex rubber balls so that they thumped with huge force on my jeep as I stopped to watch a match on a local dried out paddy (rice) field. I got the idea from asking myself the question, where will all this wonderful natural talent and enthusiasm go.

The World Cricket Fund is of course simply just an idea. Who knows if it will work! I just hope it is worth trying out. Our beloved game lies wounded and bleeding in the light of the terrible revelations about corruption. Of course some might argue that a huge increase in the cash returns as a World Fund For Cricket might provide will increase temptation to accede to corrupt practice at every level. Whilst this is true, it can also prompt greater vigilance and better methods of guardianship. There will always be cheap minded opportunists cheats and posers in any society. Perhaps an ICC agent with an office in every cricket playing country with real powers to look into the merest hint of corrupt practice in real time, as it is happening, will be a necessity. The vast majority of the players themselves that hold the willow and the cherry in their hands out there in the middle, and create the magic of cricket for us, if given a fair return for their labour and their artisanship, will always try to resist the corrupters. I am convinced that it is the negative fiscal differential against other sports, and thus frugal payments that cricketers get, that has led to the falls to temptation, though in no way or by no means is corruption justified, in any circumstances, because this is so.

There are fans on the sub-continent who are so sincere and feel so deeply about the loss of integrity in the game, some have told me they contemplated suicide when they heard about the instances of corrupt practice in world cricket. Such is the measure of their shame, that a previously unsullied icon had been corrupted. Whilst suicide might be a little extreme, cricket after all is just a game, it all serves to illustrate the strength of feeling that so many, particularly in the Indian sub-continent, have for the game.

Something needs to be done and done quickly to restore a sense of hope for the future of Cricket, both domestic and international. It is surely not beyond the realms of the talented administrator, or organisation, man or woman, or management aficionado, to get the whole thing set up fairly with efficiently run scaffolding. I admit that the ICC's shameful handling of corruption within the game tends to suggest that their delegates could not handle their own underwear. But good things have come out of the ICC too. They will be vigilant now and much better for the lessons they have learnt from the corruption issue. Any `World Cricket Fund' will only be credible if the ICC were instrumental in running it, so that once and for all we might, I stress might, have the means to take Cricket to the helm of all sporting endeavours on the planet. The returns could be so enormous and so significant and serve the noble game so well. Imagine all the ground seats filled in county matches. The question about all this is best posed thus. Is there another way that would bring about so much, for so many, in Cricket, with relatively so little effort? If so, please shout it from the rooftops. Our kinship together and goodwill for each other as international Cricket fans demands an answer.

An injection of such fiscal magnitude as US $5 billion coming into the game per year will bring about a revolution in cricket. We could have all the grounds, stands, equipment, and talented players we all want. Whilst the game and all who support and practice it will prosper, the fan who pays for it all is entitled to reap a fair share of the benefit. I have been criticized for not proposing that the fee for the pass should be much higher. Many e-mails I have received have said that fans are willing to pay up to $100 per pass. With respect,, they are missing the point. The cheaper the individual contribution, the more people can afford to buy a pass. There is an exponential reduction in final returns, the higher the individual contribution. The lowest price brings in the most and does the most for all concerned. That is the true benefit that Cricket brings to those that love the game. It is a great leveler. It is more than a game. It is an international social phenomenon, made that by the sheer numbers that follow it across the world. The idea for a World Fund For Cricket seeks to harness this power for the good of all concerned, and once and for all, hopefully, see off most of those deadly greedy types that bring ignominy on the great game we all love.

My hero in all this is the young, sun or rain soaked cricket fan in the teeming slums of Calcutta, or Dacca, holding up his $5.00 laminated World Cricket Pass and proudly feeling that along with a billion others he is an equal corporate `shareholder' in the future prospectus of world cricket, and as much a shareholder as the President of his country. In addition to this, that he or she has a fair and equal chance, together with their contemporaries, of sitting close to a Test hero and thus being able to watch that hero practicing his craft. A craft that might inspire that same fan to perhaps one day emulate that hero and play for his or her country.