Lamb: England were ambushed by the ICC

Tim Lamb: 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing' © Getty Images

The embattled England & Wales Cricket Board might have officially closed ranks with the ICC following Des Wilson's parting broadside, but its private frustrations with the handling of the Zimbabwe affair were made public by Tim Lamb last night.

Wilson, who yesterday resigned from the ECB board, claimed that the ICC had acted in a draconian way and that the ECB should have taken a firmer stance against it. And while Lamb, the ECB's chief executive, didn't endorse that view, he did admit that the board had been ambushed in March at the ICC's meeting in Auckland. It was then that the ICC changed its regulations and introduced severe penalties on countries withdrawing from tours.

"I think certain member countries of the ICC, who had read the tea leaves and were concerned about England not completing the tour, discussed what could be done and saw a change in regulations as rather an elegant way of putting pressure on England," Lamb said. The ECB had been expecting that a less punitive motion would be put forward, and was caught out when the actual proposal called for far heftier penalties.

While Lamb didn't name names, it is widely reported that the Australian board were behind the move. Historically, England and Australia are two of cricket's oldest allies, but relations have soured of late, and now Cricket Australia is allying itself with the Indian board, which it sees as being the game's new power.

"It [the motion] started life in Dhaka as a binding agreement and it was not until eleventh-hour discussion on the eve of the meeting itself that it was proposed as a change to the regulations," Lamb continued. "The ICC president and chief executive had no idea on the eve of the meeting that this was going to happen. Any suggestion that I was aware of the proposed change to the regulations in advance and failed to inform my colleagues here is completely wrong.

"If we had known what was going to happen in Auckland I suspect we might have handled things differently, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. In this job you make decisions that you think are right at the time and you hope that they are. It is very easy for others to criticise from the outside."