Organising chaos

Wasim Akram has to be rated the finest of all left-arm fast bowlers, for having an even greater range of attacking devices than the Australian Alan Davidson. Wasim could mount an attack from nowhere, striking sparks out of a dead pitch in a dead game. And, although he has now retired, he recently mounted another attack, claiming the ICC was dominated by goras or white people.

Considering that the president of the ICC, Ehsan Mani, is Wasim's fellow countryman, it seemed a strange attack; not to mention that Sunil Gavaskar is chairman of the ICC Cricket Committee; or that, although three of the seven elite panel umpires are Australian, the man who supervises them is the former Sri Lankan captain Ranjan Madugalle. These are three of the five most influential men in the ICC, along with the chief executive Malcolm Speed from Australia and the cricket manager, the South African Dave Richardson. Wasim would be spot on if he had launched his attack 15 years ago, when Australia and England had a veto and a stranglehold, as they had done since the Imperial Cricket Conference was founded in 1909. But if three-fifths of the top positions are in Asian hands and four-tenths of the full members are Asian, the argument that Asians are under-represented - and Australia and England are over-represented - is not persuasive.

It may be that Pakistan's great bowler has some private issue involving the ICC. He pioneered reverse-swing, yet no country has made him a bowling coach. But, if there is an issue, that is a matter between him and the ICC and does not affect the discussion of whether the ICC is biased or doing a proper job. And it is a question which must be asked, and regularly, for it is only eternal vigilance which preserves democracy and keeps our institutions in healthy shape.

The ICC has faults but not the ones that Wasim accuses it of. Any sporting organisation that promotes an alternative world cup six months before the proper World Cup needs to be held to account. Yes, the ICC has to promote events as part of its £300m ($550m) marketing contract with Global Cricket Corporation - a joint venture between a marketing company and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation - but not at the game's expense. Before the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies the Champions Trophy in India this October will have reduced everybody's appetite. A Champions Trophy in the middle of the four-year cycle between World Cups would be fine but not one every two years, devaluing the premier one-day tournament.

The ICC also stands accused of staging a boring World Cup in Southern Africa in 2003 because it contained so many one-sided matches. But the organisation does learn some lessons. It has rectified the format, so the 2007 tournament should produce plenty of interesting fixtures - provided the pitches are up to scratch. This is another matter and a crucial one. The ICC originally told the organising committee that all new stadia should stage trial games one year before the World Cup. But this stipulation has gone out of the window: now the ICC will be happy if the new grounds are even built in time. Pitches seem to be a lesser concern for an organisation that often gives the impression that commercial considerations come first.

The chief accusation that can and should be levelled at the ICC is that nobody at the highest level of the game's administration has played first-class, let alone Test cricket. The ICC full executive board consists of Mani, Speed, the president-elect (South Africa's Percy Sonn) and the chairmen or presidents of the 10 full members: and not a high-class game between them. They have risen to the top by being good committeemen not good cricketers. This is not to say that former players should run the sport entirely: that way would not lead to the madhouse but it would surely lead to penury, as the expertise of businessmen - who make up most committees - is essential for the game's well-being. But there should be some former players involved at the highest level, both on the executive board and in the higher echelons of the ICC's day-to-day administration, beyond Richardson, so that every decision is seen through cricket eyes from the start.

Such a development would immediately increase the moral authority of the ICC. If someone like the former Australia captain Mark Taylor (if Wasim will forgive this example) were president or chief executive of the ICC, the West Indies organising committee would have found it harder to fob off the ICC with blithe assurances that the pitches for the next World Cup will be perfect, even though the new stadia are not yet built. World bodies always claim they are only as strong as the authority constituent countries invest in them. But the ICC would be stronger if it had acquired this moral authority; if it were seen to be speaking for the game and not primarily for commercial interests. It could have suspended Zimbabwe from Test cricket more readily if the decision was made partly by people who had played Test cricket, and on the subjects of throwing, or umpiring technology, or the spirit of the game, or any other on-field events, the ICC would have greater credibility. As it is, the ICC full executive board are set to lengthen the tenure of the president from two to three years. The presidency currently rotates between the Test countries and, given the composition of the board, it will be at least half a generation before the president is a former player.

Above all, though, an ICC with increased moral authority would be in a stronger position to put the full members themselves in order. Never, it is safe to say, has cricket been so badly administered at national level.

'The chief accusation that can and should be levelled at the ICC is that nobody at the highest level of the game's administration has played first-class, let alone Test cricket' © Getty Images

Most boards are either corrupt, unaccountable, inefficient or unrepresentative, and some are all four together. The ICC should have dictated to the boards but, lacking moral authority, has not been in position to. It should have drawn up a model constitution for boards to follow and threatened those countries that did not implement it with suspension. The administration of professional cricket in most Test-playing countries is deplorable and the ICC, instead of washing its hands, could have done something about it.

There are minor annoyances too. Like endless press releases on the death of the Papua New Guinea women's Under-19 team's manager's cat; "the ICC President is sending a message of condolence". And any organisation which is full of acronyms is in danger of taking itself too seriously and obfuscation. Besides, does anybody know how the LG ICC ODI rankings work? It may be a fair system but, whatever else it is, it is not comprehensible. In 19th-century Europe there was a tricky political question to which only three men in Britain knew the answer - and one of them had forgotten, the other had gone mad and the third had died. It is unlikely there are as many people as that in the whole world who know how the ICC Test and one-day rankings work.

The ICC's achievements, however, outnumber its defects. The organisation has done more good in taking the stigma out of Aids than the Test-playing countries could have managed on an individual basis. The ICC responded quickly in arranging tsunami appeal matches. If there were no ICC, there would be no anticorruption and security unit, which is sadly necessary. The Super Series in Australia failed but at the time it was announced it seemed worth a try - and the ICC, learning from its mistakes, will not try again in a hurry. That it awarded Test status to the six-day Super Test and one-day status to the tsunami matches confi rms that such decisions are not taken through cricket eyes. The ICC protests that it consulted widely before according the highest status to these exhibition matches but, if it had a real feeling for the game, it would not have had to consult in the first place.

The annual awards are a good idea, if a borrowed one. The Under-19 World Cups are worth having too, to judge not so much by the number of players who go on to Test level but the help which they give to lesser countries, raising their standards. (Bangladesh and Zimbabwe beat Australia in the last Under-19 World Cup.) The whole development programme seems laudable, from the fi rstclass Intercontinental Cup to the ICC Trophy for associate members. We would not have much of a World Cup if it were confi ned to 10 countries, and the ICC has raised the standards of Scotland, Ireland, Bermuda and Holland ahead of 2007 so there will not be so many grotesque mismatches as last time. Pearls do not grow in isolation and by bringing together the most promising players in the ICC's winter training camp in Pretoria a pearl in Kenya or Canada might lead to more cricketers of international standard in the non-Test-playing countries.

The ICC has also cooled the issue of Test umpiring. Remember that when Australia and England dominated the game, and did nothing for the sport globally claiming they had no money, every country appointed its own umpires for a home series (except for Pakistan when they appointed two neutrals at home against India in 1989-90). There was no uniformity of standard, of interpretation of the laws, or of quality; frankly, there was sometimes deliberate bias or cheating. A country could knowingly bring in a bent umpire for a Test, get the `right' result, drop him and escape any sanction except some abuse from the visiting media.

By now Test cricket would have spontaneously combusted but for the ICC and its elite panel. Cricket still has its umpiring controversies, and always will, but at least it has taken a lot of heat, including racist heat, out of the equation. Match referees are worth having too - when they are not obsessed with holding up play so a player can stick plaster on a logo that offends one of the ICC's commercial partners. England's coach Duncan Fletcher, in his book Ashes Regained - The Coach's Story, offers several recommendations on how the match referee's role should extend to overseeing every tour, not just Tests and one-dayers, and become a tour referee. The recommendations make excellent sense, as does Fletcher's system of referrals to the third umpire. If the ICC is prepared to introduce super-subs without a trial, and complicate the process by introducing power-plays, it could at least test out referrals. The ICC's submission that the on-field umpire's word is fi nal is out of date: his word is now a starting point for mass discussion and dissection.

No organisation is going to be ideal, especially a world body that is deliberately deisgned not to be omnipotent. But, if the ICC did not exist, it would have to be invented. The days of arranging the international game on a bilateral basis - two countries planning a tour - have long since gone. And which is more democratic and effective: the ICC or the United Nations? Because the UN is a talking shop and the fi ve permanent members of the security council have all the power, it has to be the ICC every time. But it needs to become more cricketminded.