Nine players, ten voters. How very ICC

How is it possible that Zimbabwe Cricket has more influence in the governance of the game than the serial world champions, Australia? Malcolm Conn in The Australian has taken aim at the vested interests that control the game's ruling body.

Zimbabwe continues to enjoy the same constitutional power and authority over the running of the game as Australia. Indeed, in the politics of cricket, where the big games are really played, Zimbabwe can be said to be more powerful than Australia because it is part of the Afro-Asia bloc with India, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh which ultimately controls the game.

So having destroyed the game in its own country and lost almost all of its good players to professional offers overseas, the Zimbabwe administration remains a central figure of the ICC as one of the so-called 10 Test countries which run the game. Except that because Zimbabwe has "voluntarily" withdrawn from Test cricket, it is no longer officially counted by the ICC on its own ranking system.