The wrong side of the fence

In recent days, Ehsan Mani, the International Cricket Council's president, has indicated that it and he have now climbed down off the fence on which they have balanced for so long, and, sleeves rolled up, are willing to get involved in a scrap.

Unfortunately - or perhaps deliberately - Mani has chosen to try to prove his toughness by attacking two targets which he knows are, in one instance, powerless to act legally, and in the other, just powerless.

His first broadside was aimed at Tony Blair, Britain's beleaguered prime minister. Previously someone who has always asserted that politics is for politicians, Mani went into overdrive, accusing him of "inconsistency" in his approach to Zimbabwe, as British firms were allowed to trade with Zimbabwe, and British planes regularly fly into Harare. Mani went on to lambast Blair for "seeking to divert attention away from his own inaction in dealing with Zimbabwe by attempting to exert inappropriate pressure on an international sporting body to make a political decision".

The ICC has backed the England board into a corner by demanding that nothing less than a government ban on the tour taking place would suffice as a reason for England's not going. In many, if not most, Test-playing countries, the government and the national board are inextricably linked. Not only that, their governments have the power to order their citizens not to travel to certain places.

Mani, who trained as an accountant in London and lived in Britain for some time, is an intelligent man. He knows that the British government is powerless to impose such a ban. That's the price of democracy. But it suits him to conveniently ignore that fact, and so he and the ICC repeatedly pass the buck to the British government and let them, and the ECB, take all the flak.

Mani's second safe target was Zimbabwe's rebel cricketers. Earlier this week he accused them of placing "Tatenda Taibu and his team in an invidious position", by "walking out on the eve of a match".

The disaffected players were surprised and angered by Mani's comments. They were quick to point out that at no time in the month-long dispute had the ICC made any attempt to contact them to listen to their side of the story, and that his comments were based on what was being fed to the ICC by the Zimbabwe Cricket Union - which is not noted for its even-handedness.

Mani added: "If the rebels believe that walking out will result in other countries interfering in Zimbabwean cricket, I think that they have been very badly advised." That comment has all the hallmarks of ZCU double-speak, and shows a remarkable bypassing of the real issues behind the dispute.

Again, the ICC stayed firmly on the sidelines, refusing to be drawn into a situation where its intervention could have made a real difference, before thumping a sitting target whose hands were tied behind its back. The only time the ICC seemed to have much interest in the turmoil inside Zimbabwe cricket was when its precious Test Championship was seen to be threatened by the inclusion of an extremely weakened Zimbabwe side.

In Britain, the ICC has managed to achieve something rare - something which at the start of the year looked impossible. Public sympathy is now with the English board, even though most of its actions relating to Zimbabwe over the last 18 months deserve quite the opposite. But the British public has realised that while the ICC might profess to being interested in nothing but cricket's welfare, its agenda is clearly political. And it's equally clear who is pulling its strings. The ICC's true allegiances were made public a few weeks ago when Mani stated that: "Asia represents 40% of the ICC. Virtually, Asia is the ICC." As Tim de Lisle pointed out in The Times recently, Mani, as an accountant, really ought to know the difference between 40% and 100%.

The ICC headquarters sit, rather the cuckoo in the nest, next to the Compton Stand at the Nursery end of Lord's. For some time the ICC has been saying that it needs to move to somewhere more central.That move should come sooner rather than later, as it is not exactly the most popular organisation in Britain at the moment. But then again, the feeling is entirely mutual.