CMJ: ICC missionaries must spread five-day game (11 June 1997)

Wednesday 11 June 1997

ICC missionaries must spread five-day game

Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

A RESTRUCTURING of the administration of world cricket, at least as far-reaching as the one which has occurred in England, will be completed at Lord`s this week when the `old-style` International Cricket Council meet for the last time.

In place of an organisation riven by political rivalries and by disputes between the great and small countries of the world game, a new body will have emerged by next week which is not only democratic but also, it is hoped, visionary.

Fifteen years ago only six countries played Test cricket. Within two years, if not sooner, Bangladesh will become the 10th. Their application for Test status is being debated at the meeting beginning tomorrow and the process of expansion will certainly not end there. Kenya, Scotland, Ireland, Holland and Denmark are all about to be given extra help to develop cricket to a point where they, too, might earn a place at the high table.

If the way forward for these and other countries is largely through the medium of the limited-overs game, the ICC`s chief executive, David Richards, who agreed an extension to his contract yesterday, recognises also the "fundamental duty of the ICC to stand up for Test cricket worldwide". To that end some sort of world championship of Test cricket will be accepted as an essential way of maintaining the primacy of the five-day game and of selling it anew to countries where crowds have declined because of an obsession with the one-day international.

The widely publicised Wisden plan, a rolling assessment of the current standing of the countries based on their last meetings with one another, is one possibility. Three others will be considered, however, including the proposal by The Daily Telegraph cricket writer, Clive Ellis, which has had moral support from both the West Indies and South African boards.

The great attractions of the Ellis plan for a World Test Championship conducted over the course of a single calendar year is that it would give the ICC the additional spon- sorship and television income they desire for developing the game in new areas of the world without overplaying the already extremely lucrative one-day World Cup. In other words it would have the double effect of boosting the significance of Test matches in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, South Africa and Zimbabwe, where crowds have been relatively small, and of obviating the `need` to stage the one-day World Cup every two years rather than every four.

The latter proposal has been made by South Africa, but it would be a self-defeating exercise, devaluing the World Cup by removing its status as a relatively rare and therefore special competition, and further threatening Test cricket. It is too often overlooked by administrators, dazzled by the lure of television income into sending their players into more and more one-day internationals, that they are thereby undermin- ing Test cricket and with it the very considerable income which Tests themselves can generate. The contrast is obvious be- tween England, who have limited their one-day internationals and still fill their grounds for Tests, and Pakistan, who play frequent internationals and have lost most of their Test audience.

Perhaps the various interests will be better balanced when the ICC become `incorporated` this week, giving their members limited liability and enabling the council to be run less as a collection of often hostile factions loosely bound together at Lord`s and more as a global business. The new executive board of the ICC will have a delegate each from the nine Test countries, plus three representing the 23 associate member countries (elected by the associates) and the chairmen of three advisory committees, whose responsibilities will be, respectively, cricket, finance and marketing.

Sir Clyde Walcott is chairing the ICC meeting for the last time this week. He hands over as ICC president for three years to Jagmohan Dalmiya of India, who then gives way to an Australian as the presidency changes hand every three years on a rotational basis. But Walcott will remain an important figure in the world game if, as is hoped, he is elected as chairman of the new cricket committee. His has been a wise and calm hand on the tiller during the recent years of political infighting which followed, perhaps inevitably, the imperial phase, when MCC led the world game in their benevolent but uncommercial way.

Whether the newly-constituted world body will have any more teeth when it comes to matters such as ball-tampering, or allegations of players being bribed to `throw` matches by corrupt betting syndicates, remains to be seen. The likelihood is that it will be left to individual countries to put their own house in order if these matters are suspected of being anything more than sordid scandal-mongering by disaffected players. Two Test cricketers, Aamir Sohail of Pakistan and India`s Manoj Prabhakar, have made vague accusations in recent months.

Matters which definitely are under discussion this week include a proposal to continue the two bouncers an over regulation for at least another year and the plans for further `globalisation` of the game put forward by Dr Ali Bacher`s innovative committee. Bacher has charged the Test countries with the task of expanding the game in five areas. England`s sphere is Europe; India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka look after the Gulf and such countries as Afghanistan and Iran; Australia and New Zealand cover the Pacific; and the West Indies look to the Americas, including perhaps international cricket at Disneyworld in Florida.

That smacks just a little of fantasy: the challenge for `New ICC` is to expand the world of cricket without compromising its spirit. In other words to draw a line, already some- times a little blurred, between sport and show business.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)