In praise of the bat-logo police

There are glum faces all round at the ICC, and not just because Dave Richardson has instituted another round of cost-cutting by replacing the toilet paper in the executive washrooms with a more abrasive brand made from Michael Vaughan's recycled newspaper columns.

This outbreak of melancholy is down to the rum goings on at FIFA, where Mr Blatter and chums have monopolised the headlines with their shenanigans, and as a result have made the rest of the world's sporting bodies look a little second-rate. Million-dollar bribes? FBI raids? Penthouse apartments for your chihauhaus? The ICC simply can't compete with this sort of thing.

"There's only one thing worse than being derided by every media outlet in the world, and that's not being derided by every media outlet in the world," sighed an ICC spokesman wearing a green carnation.

But the chaps in Dubai shouldn't be too downhearted. They may may not be up to FIFA-esque levels of malfeasance, but their talents lie in other areas. Such as, for example, the over-zealous enforcement of petty regulations to absolutely no one's benefit.

This gift for pettifoggery was demonstrated again this week when M Vijay was fined a quarter of his match fee for violating Paragraph 7, Subsection 15b of the We've Got Nothing Better To Do Logo Regulations.

Not before time, too. For many years now, cricketers have been getting away with a proliferation of bat-edge logos, some as long as three or three and a half inches, and the ICC has no choice but to act to curb this menace endangering our game.

For his part, Vijay was philosophical about the punishment:

"I can't complain. I have been concentrating on playing cricket, treating my fellow professionals with respect, abiding by the umpires' decisions, trying to uphold the spirit of cricket and that kind of thing. As a result, I completely overlooked the length of the gap between the corner of the toe of my bat and the bottom of the sticker on the edge of my bat. It's my own fault, really."

The ICC's priorities are clear. Tackling bad behaviour on the field of play? Nah. Saving Test cricket? We'll get back to you. Achieving an equitable distribution of power and money for all the world's cricket nations? Yawn. Monitoring the precise position of a logo on a bat down to the nearest millimetre? Well, now you're talking. They may be in the second division of petty-minded, short-sighted sports administrators, but they're our petty-minded, short-sighted sports administrators, and we wouldn't have them any other way.