World Cup reparations on table at ICC meeting

Global Cricket Corporation (GCC) is expected to table a claim for 30 million pounds from lost revenues from the 2003 World Cup when the International Cricket Council (ICC) meets in London next week.

New Zealand Cricket's (NZC) chief executive Martin Snedden said that ICC members had received an initial briefing preparatory to their meeting on the legal procedures involved with the claim which directly affects India, Sri Lanka, England and New Zealand.

The first two countries had contractual problems with players while England and New Zealand opted out of World Cup games, for which GCC had the television rights, against Zimbabwe and Kenya respectively.

"There are various different issues concerned and different levels and the best estimate is that it could all take between one and two years to resolve," Snedden said.

"It is quite a complex thing which is going in a lot of different directions."

However, the money withheld from New Zealand by the ICC in expectation of such a claim from GCC has forced a rethink by New Zealand administrators of their future domestic funding.

"I will be highly surprised if there are not some casualties. We can't afford to spend money we haven't got," he said.

NZC were involved with a budget process which should be completed in the next six weeks and that would involve some decisions being made on spending for the coming season, he said.

Also on the London agenda are security matters. Snedden said that it had been a constant at meetings since September 11, 2001 and there was always discussion about the safety of touring and the degree of risk involved which was something countries had to expect.

Different countries had different perspectives of the risk, he said.

New Zealand is due to return to Pakistan from where it called short its tour of 2002 when a bomb exploded outside the team hotel on the morning the second Test in Karachi was expected to start.

New Zealand would undertake a security check before the tour but Snedden did not know if the opt-out invitation offered to players before last year's Champions Trophy in Sri Lanka would apply for this year's tour.

He said there were two full tours of Pakistan before New Zealand were due to tour there.

Another issue on the table at the ICC meeting is the volume of cricket. At the moment the guidelines for the optimum level of cricket for countries was 15 Tests and 30 one-day internationals.

New Zealand didn't play anything like that number and the absence of a heavy match load on the players was reflected in the New Zealanders wanting to partake of county cricket this northern summer.

Next season, from the start of New Zealand's tour to India the side would be playing cricket constantly until July 2004 with 10 Tests and 26 ODIs and Snedden felt that the mix of 40-50 days of Test cricket and 26 ODIs was a pretty good one.

"I don't agree with people who say there is an over-preponderance of one-day cricket. There is just a lot of both forms," he said.

Snedden said the move toward two-Test series was not an ideal situation.

"We'd prefer three-Test series but it is not that simple with two tours a summer given our weather conditions.

"It works on a reciprocal basis and I suppose when you open a door like that we did with India last summer when we played two Tests and seven one-dayers, because they needed to leave New Zealand early, you end up with a two-Test tour in return.

"The ideal thing would be to have three-Test tours."