Another fine mess

Des Wilson: raised the issue of morality © The Wisden Cricketer

A year on from the World Cup fiasco the ECB finds itself juggling the same balls of morality and expedience. Simon Wilde examines how it was outmanoeuvred by the ICC

The one question any cricket follower is entitled to ask in relation to the Zimbabwe affair is: how on earth did England get into this shambles, one year on from a fiasco over precisely the same matter?

Back in January nothing looked less likely. The England and Wales Cricket Board appeared to have paved the way for a dignified withdrawal from the scheduled tour of Zimbabwe later this year. Having done its homework behind the scenes it began to reveal its strategy relatively free of pressure from time, politicians and media, though Vodafone, an important sponsor, had made it known it would prefer the tour not to proceed.

It may have reckoned without the International Cricket Council which, as at the World Cup, has been cast as the biggest villain in the piece. Cricket's first television age may have delivered the game welcome millions in revenue but it brought in its wake administrators beholden to mammon and so fearful of jeopardising precious contracts that they were quicker to punish supposed miscreants than to broker sensible compromise.

The ICC likes to talk of itself as a family yet the heads of household have shown themselves inflexible, even bullying. It was mainly this that drove Des Wilson, chairman of the ECB's corporate affairs and marketing advisory committee, to resign so that he could expose the ICC's tactics for what they were.

None of this lets the ECB off the hook. For all that it may have done to modernise in recent years, its administration remains rooted in amateurism and in this case it produced amateur results.

On January 21 Wilson presented a document outlining the decision-making process behind undertaking overseas tours. He argued that, whatever the ICC might say about the need for countries to fulfil its future tours programme unless governments instruct otherwise or safety and security are an issue, other influences inevitably play a part in determining whether one country can tour another.

In this context Wilson raised the issue of morality and, although Zimbabwe was not mentioned, his document was correctly interpreted as the first move in England's planned withdrawal from their Zimbabwe tour. Wilson's document would not be the basis for withdrawal; that would be a letter sent to the ECB two days later by Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, urging England not to go. Straw's letter was the result of weeks of careful work by Wilson and John Read, the director of corporate affairs, among others. And, for good measure, four days later Chris Mullin, a foreign office minister, told the House of Commons that the government would "prefer" England not to tour.

All this was designed to lay the ground for the ECB's management board meeting of January 29, at which it was intended the tour would be called off. Members of the 16-man board knew the decision would be unpopular with the global cricket community but a majority was understood to hold grave reservations about sending a team to Zimbabwe and to support withdrawal even if it meant paying generous compensation to the Zimbabwe Cricket Union for lost revenue, small though that probably was.

Everything seemed to be in place. All that was now needed was a clear and confident assertion from the ECB that it was interpreting Straw's letter as force majeure - in other words the British government was effectively instructing its national cricket team not to go to Zimbabwe - and forthwith pulling out of the tour. That would have left the ICC to gainsay it. Its lawyers would happily have run up a large bill trying but they would surely not have managed it.

England would have been unpopular with the international cricket community for a while but things would have moved on soon enough; by April the debate had indeed switched to the dispute between the ZCU and its white players and the debilitating effect it was having on the team playing Sri Lanka. The ICC Champions Trophy would still have gone ahead in England in September. As Ehsan Mani, the ICC president, indicated at the time, no connection should be made between that event and England's Zimbabwe tour.

But no such ECB statement was forthcoming. This was particularly bizarre given that Tim Lamb, the ECB's chief executive, and David Morgan, the chairman, continued to assert that Straw's letter was sufficient for withdrawal. Even two weeks later Morgan was saying: "The Jack Straw letter must surely be as close as any government is going to come in a western democracy to say to a sports body you shouldn't go."

The truth is that Lamb and Morgan lost their nerve at the first sign of opposition after details of Wilson's document became public. Peter Chingoka, the head of the ZCU, gave it a predictably hostile reception and the media debated the impact that withdrawal might have on England's staging of the Champions Trophy. So swift was the collapse in confidence that Wilson's document was not formally discussed by the management board, let alone adopted as ECB policy, even though Morgan and Lamb reviewed two drafts.

Instead, on the day Straw's letter was released, Lamb said the management board would put off a final decision until late February. The situation was very complex, he said, although why it was more complex now than when the ECB had briefed journalists that a decision was imminent was unclear.

Lamb was probably always uneasy about the original strategy. A year earlier he had argued forcefully in favour of playing England's World Cup match in Zimbabwe, defending English cricket's right to carry out its business there as other companies were, until the strain of a heated public campaign led to withdrawal.

Morgan's conciliatory style - which had won him the chairmanship ahead of the more autocratic Lord MacLaurin who stood down from the post when he saw his support eroding - was also ill-suited to executing the plan. Rather than provide decisive leadership Morgan preferred to talk. After the World Cup he had gone to Harare to smooth things over with the ZCU, who elicited from him a promise that England would tour in 2004 provided it was safe. But to keep the ECB hawks happy, he later asked Wilson to review the factors influencing overseas tours in case a pull-out was required.

Now, three days after Straw's letter, Morgan and Lamb agreed to meet Mani, who asked them to put off a decision until after the ICC's next meeting in Auckland on March 9 and 10, when they could explain their reasons to other countries in person. Why did they acquiesce? Perhaps simply because it was the polite, honourable and British thing to do. They even seemed to think it might be possible to stage the series on neutral soil, although there was never any chance of Zimbabwe agreeing to that.

The implication behind Mani's request was that, if the ECB waited until Auckland, he would use his good offices to achieve a friendly compromise there. In fact in the intervening six weeks the ICC prepared the ground for the greatest heist since the Great Train Robbery. When Morgan got to Auckland, he found every other country of the "overwhelming view" that England must tour Zimbabwe and that, if they did not, they should face a year's suspension under a new rule voted in at that very meeting. Some were so ashamed of what they were doing that one delegate, who dined with Morgan the night before, gave no hint of what was coming. What is extraordinary is that Lamb was party to proposals to harden the ICC's stance on tour withdrawals at a meeting in Dhaka in October yet apparently saw no urgency in making a decision ahead of Auckland.

Back in January Mani had made no mention of suspension and said he accepted England's tour would probably not go ahead. In his desperation to keep the ICC's tours programme intact, it seems that Mani let down Morgan and Lamb.

There was no way the ECB could withstand a year's suspension or - after the way the rest of the ICC board had conducted itself in Auckland - gamble on calling the ICC's bluff on the matter. Asked if the ICC would really resort to such an act, Morgan said: "I wouldn't be so sure." Suspension would cost tens of millions of pounds.

Morgan and Lamb, having flunked the force majeure card, were left with a dud hand. They met the government again in early May but the government could scarcely provide a stronger lead than it had.

Less naive men would not have allowed themselves to be so outmanoeuvred. Morgan, two years in his job, has yet to convince that he has what it takes on the game's global stage. As for Lamb, an astute survivor during eight years as chief executive, his credibility stands at a new low. Another reason Wilson resigned was because he felt Morgan had lost the will to fight the ICC.

Whether or not an implosion in Zimbabwe cricket provides an escape route, Morgan and Lamb should be judged on their actions.