Is it really 'for the good for the game'?

Food for thought for the ICC. An article in The New Yorker, talks about why governing bodies of international sport often turn out so badly. It’s subject is FIFA, football’s kindly ruler which is currently under the media spotlight after various allegations were made by the BBC.

“It rules impartially, concerned only with “the good of the game,” as the organisation likes to say … [but] “the good of the game” seems to get subordinated to the good of FIFA. Why, when global governing bodies have such noble aims, are the results so consistently bad?

“Since Blatter [FIFA’s president] took office, FIFA has channelled tens of millions of dollars in grants to developing countries to promote soccer, while seeming not to pay too much attention to how the money gets spent. Perhaps coincidentally, this tends to make representatives from these countries very grateful, and very unwilling to change the status quo.”

No-one is suggesting that the ICC is anything like FIFA, but it is a warning of how things can go so very awry, even when the original intentions are good.