Howard's End
Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s nomination for ICC vice-president has not been universally well received, to say the least
Tariq Engineer
25-Feb-2013
Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s nomination for ICC vice-president has not been universally well received, to say the least. In Outlook magazine, Rohit Mahajan takes a look at the reasons why Howard has elicited such strong feelings from within the cricket world.
The objections of Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, on the face of it, don’t seem to be very grave, though they do believe him to be racist. Sri Lankans officially say they would prefer a career cricket administrator, though their real grievance is that Howard once called the great Muttiah Muralitharan a ‘chucker’. The Zimbabweans dislike him essentially for his role in that country’s suspension from the Commonwealth in 2002, and his call for boycott of relations with their country.
More serious are the concerns of South Africa and Pakistan. Howard, through the 1980s, opposed sanctions against the then white supremacist regime in South Africa. Right through the end, he was a critic of the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela. For the Pakistanis, his enthusiastic support for George Bush’s unilateral action in Iraq and Afghanistan is a big negative.
Tariq Engineer is a former senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo