What good does a divide do?
Gideon Haigh, writing for the Australian, believes that the ICC's plan for a comprehensive structural overhaul and to cede most executive decision-making to the BCCI, ECB and Cricket Australia, will ultimately do more harm than good
18-Jan-2014
Gideon Haigh, writing for the Australian, believes that the ICC's plan for a comprehensive structural overhaul and to cede most executive decision-making to the BCCI, ECB and Cricket Australia, will ultimately do more harm than good.
Yes, the vast majority of bilateral arrangements are unprofitable on their face: there is so much cricket being played, supranational as well as international, that the market for content is flooded, and television's values predominate. But it's also true that a continuity of contact matters for other reasons, contributing to an on-going epic story, longer and bigger than any individual, however famous, and any administrator, however enduring. It's even truer that the decline in the value of bilateral series is due in part to their neglect. Who can get fussed about two-Test series? How is it possible that India has not played Pakistan in a Test in six years, and not hosted Bangladesh for a Test in thirteen? Increasingly, bilateral series have become about back scratching among the mutually interested and the pursuit of administrative vendettas.