Talking player power

A few months ago, Sean Morris, the chief executive of the Professional Cricketers' Association (PCA), the game's oldest and most successful players' union, flew to Manhattan. Not, you would have thought, the most obvious place to visit in the middle of an English season, but the alibi was an acceptable one.

The purpose was a fact-finding visit to the Major League Baseball Players Association, one of the planet's most powerful unions, period. The union that succeeded where two world wars and the Great Depression failed, instigating a strike that caused the cancellation of the World Series. The union that brought sport into the post-feudal era of free agency. It was a revealing trip, and also an extremely sobering one.

"It's a completely different organisation," Morris notes, with as much dispassion as he can muster. The awe, though, is plain; the envy barely, if expertly, contained. "They have an annual surplus of US$40 million and their members are on a minimum wage of around $400,000 a year. They base their operations on legal skills, focusing on contracts and in having leverage over them. If we had $40 million…"

The voice trickles away. Morris is fully aware that the PCA, or any cricketers' association, will almost certainly never match that sort of clout, not least since there is no such body in India. Nor does he envisage there ever being one. "In that culture everyone wants to be a cricketer. They've got godlike status and privileges. They seem happy. They certainly play like they're happy."

Is that a dart at India's current opponents? If it is, Morris is not about to admit to such a treacherous thought. Not one member of the national squad, he insists, "wouldn't crawl through barbed wire to play for England". But then, with all due respect, he would say that, wouldn't he? He wouldn't be doing his job if he didn't. "I don't buy the theory that they're losing because they're distracted. It's too easy to draw that conclusion, and misleading. None of my conversations with players during the tour have suggested that. They've come up against a bloody good Indian side."

Nevertheless, Morris is acutely aware that the times are a'changin', and fast. Professional cricketers have never remotely enjoyed the (admittedly limited) bargaining power they do right now. And thanks to the Twenty20 revolution there is plenty of power to add. The trick, he feels, is to harness it for the collective good.

Morris, who turned 40 in September, seems a shrewd, amiable sort. It undoubtedly enhances his perspective that his own professional career was spent almost exclusively in the foothills. The main function of the PCA, he stresses, is to look after its members once they retire: "We have a duty of care." Fortunately he appears to have needed less looking after than most.

A sociology graduate from Durham University, brandishing suitably regimental initials (Robert Sean Milner, RSM), he played for clubs in Buenos Aires, Cape Town and Perth, and opened for Hampshire from 1992 to 1996. His nickname in the rickety old Northlands Road dressing room, intriguingly, was "The Saint". I forgot, sadly, to ask whether this reflected selfless virtuousness or a personality similar to the renowned TV smoothie.

What was clear from our conversation, as well as from the views of those who know him, is that Morris is not the confrontational type. Which is probably a good thing under the current circumstances, delicate as they are. It would be an error, though, to mistake diplomacy for timidity.

In April he succeeded the trail-blazing Richard Bevan, who did so much to help county cricketers earn a liveable living, secure a decent pension, and have a less fearful afterlife. There was no settling-in period. After all, that was also the month the Indian Premier League launched. Morris is under no illusions whatsoever about its historical significance. "The auction system meant that this was the first time a public value had been put on individual players rather than teams or countries, giving a benchmark for their value. It created a market."

Right now, he says, "the biggest issue for us, for the players", is not so much the wrangling between the England and Wales Cricket Board and the Board of Control for Cricket in India as the more vicious tussle between the IPL and the Indian Cricket League. "The last I heard was that the talks had broken down, the ICL were talking about suing, and that this had prompted talk of a merger. My view is purely based on the value of the market. The only cricket market that's big enough to have a major impact is in India, and it's a question of whether it can sustain both leagues. The only parallel is Packer. There was more antagonism over that than this and a merger ensued. But here we have two people with deep pockets." And unlike dear old Kerry, neither Subhash Chandra nor Lalit Modi seems likely to move into the shadows any time soon.

And it is county cricket, home to a sizeable majority of the world's full-time professionals, that has suffered the brunt of the fallout. "We missed out on having a second team in the Champions League because Kent fielded two ICL players in Justin Kemp and Azhar Mahmood in the Twenty20 Cup. Their players lost a lot of money. And we want players to have the right to play where they want. The bizarre thing was that all the problems now revolve around Kolpaks and overseas players. It was very hard for Kemp and Azhar. They've taken a hit for everyone. Hats off to them. But there's clearly double standards here."

Of rather greater concern to British aficionados, of course, are the new central contracts currently being haggled over by the ECB and the PCA. Although Morris prefers to depict this in gentler tones and more genteel terms, he also appears to recognise that the gloves may have to come off if "discussions" do not bear the appropriate amount of fruit - i.e. allow the likes of Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff a share of some of that IPL lolly. "This can be a genteel game administratively," he states, "but we mustn't be frightened of our responsibilities."

At present, Morris and his PCA colleagues are "talking to agents, not players". The unknown quantity, of course, is the IPL. To his almost certain knowledge, "there are no contracts on the table - the franchises can't make offers yet because they're still sorting out salary caps and so on". This year's central contracts were not signed until January, he points out, but it wasn't a matter of brinkmanship then and it isn't now.

"We've got to include conditions for the Stanford Series, and potential IPL involvement. We're working with the ECB to clarify the schedule. As you'd expect, it's a thick document, and there's a few little bits around the edges we're tinkering with. We'll wait to see the outcome of the ECB's talks with the BCCI, and they're a week or two away from resuming. The optimum solution would be a window for players to be available for the IPL - it makes sense for them as well as for our domestic competitions."

The PCA's relationship with the ECB, Morris says, is "pretty good on a lot of things". He speaks "a lot" to David Collier, the ECB's chief executive, and has set up a working party whose findings will be made available to the board's own working party. "We've got to play a more active role in getting the optimum structure. It's crazy not to ask the players for their views." Which is about as emotive as a quote from Sean Morris gets.

He is adamant about one thing: the Future Tours Programme is central to everything, and needs urgent surgery. And not solely in terms of removing clashes between international duties and more profitable endeavours. "We're getting together in the New Year - the ECB, us and other stakeholders - to thrash it out. It's definitely needed. We need a robust FTP. From the viewpoint of an armchair fan, we can't have situations whereby we tour New Zealand for two-and-a-half months and then they play here three weeks later. It'll probably be the same with the West Indies next year. And it's becoming a pattern. South Africa toured Bangladesh recently, then came here, then Bangladesh went there. There's not enough variety."

Unlike some compatriots, he is grateful for India's hegemony. "In the current economic climate we're very lucky to have a dominant market driving the value of cricket worldwide. We're clearly going through teething problems - how can we not, with billions of dollars flying around? And it's all because of Twenty20 - and that wouldn't have happened had it not been necessary. Attendances and income were falling. And power is very difficult to control. Players and players' associations have a bit more influence now, and with that comes responsibility."

The challenge, he says, is two-fold. "The guys at the top generate revenue and jobs and provide aspirational figures, so we need to maximise that. But that must fit the long-term needs of the game. We need a bit of balance right now. Freddie [Flintoff] would love to play in the IPL but cut him and he'd bleed blue. He doesn't want to participate to the detriment of cricket. He feels that additional level of responsibility."

Amid all the swirling uncertainty, a recent reminder of the even bigger picture proved timely. "I saw a really heartwarming behind-the-scenes DVD, shot by Jeremy Snape during the IPL in the spring. The Australian and Indian players were getting on really well. That hasn't always been the case in recent times, has it? Imagine how tense it was during the Packer years when counties were sacking players. One young Indian guy had had a poster of Shane Warne on his wall and now they were team-mates. If that isn't great news, I don't know what is."