The things that went right to get New Zealand in the World Test Championship final

 

Ravi Shastri on the World Test Championship

 

The ICC and cricket boards are not serious about spot fixing

Alan Bull in The Guardian


 
If the ECB wants to demonstrate how serious it is about tackling spot-fixing there are better ways to do it than shouting down the people who are presenting the evidence.


Seems like it was Mark Wood’s bad luck to draw a short straw last week. The day after al-Jazeera released the second part of their investigation into spot-fixing in cricket Wood was put up to talk to the press. He said the accusations reminded him of “the boy who cried wolf”. Maybe Wood always used to fall asleep before his parents made it to the end of the book. Right now, five months after the first part of al-Jazeera’s expose, we are still waiting to see whether the danger they are shouting about really exists, but Wood, like everyone else in English cricket, will hope this story does not end with everyone looking the other way while the wolf eats up the sheep.

Al-Jazeera’s second film was more grounded than the first. It’s built around the fact that its source, Aneel Munawar, accurately forecast the score in 25 out of the 26 passages of play in 15 different international matches. Al-Jazeera says independent analysis shows the odds he could have done that by guesswork alone are 9.2m to one. The case is not perfect; the one big problem with it is al-Jazeera’s lawyers do not seem to trust it enough to let its journalists release the names of the players involved. But there is enough evidence there now that the story should not be swiftly dismissed.

Which, unfortunately, seems to be what some of the authorities want to do. The England and Wales Cricket Board said al-Jazeera’s information was “poorly prepared and lacks clarity and corroboration”. The tone of its response was all wrong. If the ECB wants to demonstrate how serious it is about tackling spot-fixing there are better ways to do it than shouting down the people who are presenting the evidence. The ECB’s statement seemed to put it on the other side of this problem to the journalists working to expose it. Since then the conversation around the investigation has turned into a slanging match about which side is more credible than the other.

Al-Jazeera did not help by throwing back blows of its own. “The ICC, together with certain national cricket boards and their supporters in the media, has reacted to our documentary with dismissals and attacks on the messenger,” it said. “We are particularly struck by what appears to be a refusal from certain quarters to even accept the possibility that players from Anglo-Saxon countries could have engaged in the activities exposed by our programme.” That attitude may have been common once and there may still be lingering hints of it around now. But anyone who holds it is a fool.The Spin: sign up and get our weekly cricket email.

At this point the question is not whether people are spot-fixing cricket matches but who is doing it and how often. In the last 10 years bowlers, batsmen, and captains, umpires, coaches, groundstaff and administrators have been caught and banned for fixing, and they have come from England, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Zimbabwe. You should not need any more evidence that this is a universal problem. But, if you do, Cricinfo published some last week. It was the story of a corrupt approach made to the Canadian wicketkeeper Hamza Tariq at the 2011 World Cup.

Tariq explains how a friend of a friend invited him out for drinks. The man was a cricketer, which is how they got to know each other. When they went out a second time the man brought three more friends along. They bought Tariq dinner and drinks, and offered, later in the evening, to fix him up with a woman. It was only later, after an officer from the ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit intervened, that Tariq realised they were grooming him. Tariq was a fringe player from an associate team but last I looked the weaknesses those fixers were trying to identify and exploit – fondness for drink, money, sex – are pretty common in countries where they play Test cricket, too.

That 2011 World Cup, it seems now, fell right in the middle of an era when spot-fixing was rife. Mohammad Amir, Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif, Mervyn Westfield, Lou Vincent, Danish Kaneria: all those cases happened in 2010 and 2011. It was also around that time, al-Jazeera says, that Munawar first became involved in fixing.

It also says the ICC has known about Munawar ever since, which is one reason why it is reluctant to hand over all the information it has but would prefer to give it to Interpol instead. “We have become increasingly concerned at the ICC’s ability and resolve to police the game.”

It is not the only one to say this. Remember, Brendon McCullum criticised the ACU’s “very casual approach” in 2016. The head of the ACU, Alex Marshall, argues the unit is much stronger now and the sport has never invested so many resources in fighting corruption. But then, at the same time Marshall is saying that, the Pakistan Cricket Board has appointed Wasim Akram to its new cricket committee. Akram, you may remember, was one of a number of cricketers investigated by the Qayyum report into fixing in the 1990s. The Qayyum report concluded he “cannot be said to be above suspicion”.

The PCB chairman, Ehsan Mani, was able to justify the appointment by arguing that other players who were named in the Qayyum report were allowed to carry on working in international cricket. And he is right. One of them, Mushtaq Ahmed, was England’s spin-bowling coach for years, even though Qayyum concluded “there are sufficient grounds to cast strong doubt” on him, too. At this point indignant words do not do much to demonstrate anyone’s commitment to taking the problem seriously enough.

Cricket's Match Fixers - The Munawar Files

Courtesy - Al Jazeera

The Shashank Redemption - Why not make administrators our role models?

ROB STEEN in Cricinfo

By putting a stop to the brief reign of the Big Three, Shashank Manohar has managed to do something that defied criticism © Getty Images


I simply couldn't believe all the filth which came out of their mouths. All day long. And to anyone. It was hilarious but unrepeatable, and because I wanted them to treat me as one of the lads, I accepted it.

You really know how to control a match buddy. It's a f***ing joke.

Two snapshots of sport in 2016, both from Australia, the nation that, some might say, put the "tit" in competitive.

That first reverberant sound bite emerged last week from England wicketkeeper Sarah Taylor, semi-fondly reminiscing about her recent experiences as the first woman to play the highest grade of male club cricket for Northern Districts in Adelaide. Somewhat unsurprisingly, she discovered that her ears and sensibilities were not going to be spared. As Bryan Ferry so eloquently put it, "Boys will be boys will be boys-yoy-yoys…"

The second, decidedly unsound bite came during last month's Australian Open, when that gifted but very naughty overhead smasher Nick Kyrgios hit fresh heights in his impressive assault on John McEnroe's all-time record for sporting officials harangued, abused and ridiculed. Indeed, at the end of the match in question, Kyrgios approached James Keothavong, the latest object of his loathing, and told the British umpire he was "a terrible referee", thus achieving the notable double of being at once searingly honest and hopelessly wrong.

What distinguishes the verbals encountered by Taylor from those delivered by Kyrgios, of course, is that the former occurred during a match that was not covered by the all-seeing, almost-all-hearing broadcasters. What further unites them is that the rules of the respective games, at amateur and professional level alike, empower the enforcers to penalise the offensive offenders. It is in the now-histrionic court of public approval that things get messy.

Naturally, there are those - almost invariably the sort of folk who claim to have first-hand memories of the '60s but were already too old to join in the fun - who will assure you that bad behaviour during a sporting contest is a strictly late-20th-century curse, triggered by the advent of unseemly rewards and the TV-fuelled obsession with personalities and controversy. This is, of course, absolute rot.

For no justifiable reason, playing sport for a living - unlike acting or singing or dancing or painting - means not only having to behave yourself, but being seen to behave yourself.

Ask Colin McDonald. Roused by Mike Atherton's recent contention that Fred Trueman and Brian Statham were England's No. 1 all-time co-manipulators of the new cherry, the dogged former Australia opener recently reflected on the might of Frank "Typhoon" Tyson: "I will never forget the remarks made by my opening partner Jim Burke during the 1959 Adelaide Test after a Tyson bouncer: 'If you bowl another one of those I'll knock your block off with this bat.' 'Will yer?' replied Frank. Not wishing to enjoy being the recipient of a similar delivery, my pleasant rejoinder to Tyson on his way back to his mark was 'Well bowled.'"

In emailing those wincing reminiscences to the Times, McDonald perhaps unwittingly highlighted the preposterousness of what might best be termed the sporting contract - that timeless unwritten constitution that obliges professional sportsfolk to seek victory at any cost but behave like a pre-pubescent Mormon; the same unwritten constitution that simultaneously obliges our competitive artists to remember, above all, that it's only a blimmin' game.

For those who regard ungentlemanly conduct as perpetually indefensible, last week's Under-19 World Cup game between West Indies and Zimbabwe in Chittagong proffered much to get high and mighty about. With one over remaining and the Zimbabweans requiring a further three runs, Richard Ngarava was "mankaded" by Keemo Paul, sending waves of disgust rippling around the planet.

Indeed, it says all too much about cricket's self-deluding self-image that a photograph of the incident made its way onto the English sports pages even though not one of Blighty's nine national daily papers sent a correspondent to the tournament - thus missing the lethally precocious magnificence of Alzarri Shaheim Joseph, a skyscraping Antiguan beanpole who seems destined to put Kemar Roach and Jerome Taylor to shame by becoming the millennium's first great lean, mean Caribbean pace machine.

In principle, this column agrees wholeheartedly with Tony Cozier: the notion of being honour-bound to deliver a pre-emptive warning is more than a little stupefying. For one thing, it's not as if we expect batsmen to stick their hand up and inform the bowler they're about to suddenly take guard the other way round. For another, baseball, cricket's uppity younger brother, has always been more clear-cut: if a runner is caught straying off base while sneakily seeking a head start, he's out and that's it. No ethical posturing or accusations of moral bankruptcy here. In fact, such dismissals are so common they have their own incriminating name: "picked off".



If Ched Evans wins his appeal and is re-signed by Sheffield United, will he be greeted with apologies? © Getty Images


Should we be perturbed that teenagers such as Paul appear to be every bit as prepared as their elders and alleged betters to seek any legitimate advantage available rather than concern themselves with something so nebulous as "the spirit" of the game? The opposite conclusion should be drawn: their priority is to demonstrate that they are capable of making the leap from outstanding amateurs to - at the very least - competent professionals.

For no justifiable reason, playing sport for a living - unlike acting or singing or dancing or painting - means not only having to behave yourself, but being seen to behave yourself. On and off the park. Why rugby flankers or NFL tight ends - whose job is to disrupt the opposition by virtually any means necessary - should be expected to be angels beyond the touchline is utterly beyond this column's ken. Since successful athletes tend to peak in their late 20s, all this column can say is that when it was that age, it was about as mature as day-old cheddar. Then there are the stresses and strains of doing one's job in public, unaided by an editor or body double, never mind in the incessant glare of the octopus otherwise known as the media. Shouldn't compassion be more prevalent than self-righteous, hypocritical indignation?

This is not to say there are not intensely problematic cases. Nor decry the many Sheffield United FC fans - among them the Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill, whose name was removed from a stand at Bramall Lane after she, along with many others, threatened to end their loyalty should the club re-sign the convicted rapist Ched Evans. Nor fault Atlanta Falcons for releasing Michael Vick in 2009 after the quarterback had spent 21 months in jail for running a dogfighting ring. Vick, though, rediscovered his mojo by kind permission of the Philadelphia Eagles. As for Evans, who has always maintained his innocence, his case has been referred to the Court of Appeal. What happens if the verdict is reversed? Would United re-sign him? Would (anti) social media resound with apologies?

"I'm not paid to be a role model. I'm paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court." Thus, in a largely forgotten 1993 commercial, stated the NBA star Charles Barkley, hitting the nail squarely on the head. "Funny how big shots accept all the trappings of role model-dom - especially the residual commercial cash - before they renounce their broader responsibilities to society," retorted Phil Mushnick in the New York Post. Meanwhile, in Sports Illustrated, Barkley's fellow NBA alumnus Karl Malone jabbed hard: "Charles... I don't think it's your decision to make. We don't choose to be role models, we are chosen. Our only choice is whether to be a good role model or a bad one."

Begging to differ was the Boston College sociologist Michael Malec, former editor of theJournal of Sport and Social Issues. "In essence Barkley is correct. If you want to emulate what he does on court, you've got a wonderful model there. That doesn't necessarily mean he ought to be a model as a father or husband."

Time, then, for a radical rethink: if we really must have role models, should we not look to the administrators, the purported adults? Plainly, suggesting even a tiny proportion fit the bill is tantamount to proposing that the next best option is Robert Mugabe (the current No. 1 global dictator, according to Forbes magazine, just ahead of Bashar al-Assad). Fishing a good guy out of the alphabet soup containing such toxic ingredients as the ICC, IOC, IAAF and FIFA, is akin to locating a needle in the Pacific Ocean.

Tim Wigmore was spot on when he pointed out that, before India - with a little help from their equally greedy, yellow-bellied pals in Australia and England - started muscle-flexing in earnest, the ICC was scarcely a model of enlightened governance. On the other hand, quoting the questionable wit and dubious wisdom of Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's former chief of staff ("Never let a serious crisis go to waste") was perhaps not the wisest choice.

Emanuel, after all, "seems committed", attested that zealous American scourge of bad sports Dave Zirin, "to win the current spirited competition as the most loathsome person in American political life". As mayor of Chicago, Emanuel demonstrated how the profits generated by spectator sport can distort social values. Having overseen the closure of 54 schools and six mental-health clinics under the justification of a "budgetary crisis", he handed over $100 million-plus to DePaul University for a new basketball arena.

What, then, of Shashank Manohar? In terminating the mercifully brief reign of the "Big Three" with suitable prejudice, he should be feted as the first major sporting administrator in recent memory to do something that defied criticism. Nonetheless, there are no fewer than three Ranji Trophy sides in his own state. As reader Jose P observed in a comment: "The diversity, and complexity of the well-entrenched multiple power centres within the BCCI structure, is a thousand gordian knots knotted into a more complex humongous knot."

Still, let's be generous and optimistic out there: anyone for the Shashank redemption?

MCC: the greatest anachronism of English cricket

by Maxie Allen in The Full Toss • March 16, 2012

There’s been an outbreak of egg-and-bacon-striped handbags at dawn. Sir John Major’s resignation from the Main Committee of the MCC, in a row about redevelopment plans at Lord’s, has triggered a furious war of words in St John’s Wood.

Put simply, the former prime minister took umbrage at the process by which the MCC decided to downgrade the project. He then claimed that Phillip Hodson, the club’s president, publicly misrepresented his reasons for resigning, and in response Sir John wrote an open letter to set the record straight, in scathing terms.

The saga has been all over the cricket press, and even beyond, in recent weeks – underlining the anomalously prominent role the MCC continues to maintain within the eccentric geography of English cricket.

To this observer it’s both puzzling and slightly troubling that the people who run cricket, and the mainstream media who report on it, remain so reverentially fascinated by an organisation whose function has so little resonance for the vast majority of people who follow the game in this country.

Virtually anything the Marylebone Cricket Club do or say is news – and more importantly, cricket’s opinion-formers and decision-makers attach great weight to its actions and utterances. Whenever Jonathan Agnew interviews an MCC bigwig during the TMS tea-break – which is often – you’d think from the style and manner of the questioning that he had the prime minister or Archbishop of Canterbury in the chair.

Too many people at the apex of cricket’s hierarchy buy unthinkingly into the mythology of the MCC. Their belief in it borders on the religious. A divine provenance and mystique are ascribed to everything symbolised by the red and yellow iconography.  The club’s leaders are regarded as high priests, their significance beyond question.

The reality is rather more prosaic. The MCC is a private club, and nothing more. It exists to cater for the wishes of its 18,000 members, which are twofold: to run Lord’s to their comfort and satisfaction, and to promote their influence within cricket both in England and abroad. The MCC retains several powerful roles in the game – of which more in a moment.

You can’t just walk up to the Grace Gates and join the MCC. Membership is an exclusive business. To be accepted, you must secure the endorsement of four existing members, of whom one must hold a senior rank, and then wait for twenty years. Only four hundred new members are admitted each year. But if you’re a VIP, or have influential friends in the right places, you can usually contrive to jump the queue.

Much of the MCC’s clout derives from its ownership of Lord’s, which the club incessantly proclaims to be ‘the home of cricket’. This assertion involves a distorting simplification of cricket’s early history. Lord’s was certainly one of the most important grounds in the development of cricket from rural pastime to national sport, but far from the only one. The vast majority of pioneering cricketers never played there – partly because only some of them were based in London.

Neither the first test match in England, not the first test match of all, were played at Lord’s. The latter distinction belongs to the MCG, which to my mind entitles it to an equal claim for history’s bragging rights.

The obsession with the status of Lord’s is rather unfair to England’s other long-established test grounds, all of whom have a rich heritage. If you were to list the most epic events of our nation’s test and county history, you’d find that only a few of them took place at Lord’s. Headingley provided the stage for the 1981 miracle, for Bradman in 1930, and many others beside. The Oval is where test series usually reach their climax. In 2005, Edgbaston witnessed the greatest match of all time.

Lord’s is only relevant if you are within easy reach of London. And personally, as a spectator, the place leaves me cold. I just don’t feel the magic. Lord’s is too corporate, too lacking in atmosphere, and too full of people who are there purely for the social scene, not to watch the cricket.

Nevertheless, Lord’s gives the MCC influence, which is manifested in two main ways. Firstly, the club has a permanent seat on the fourteen-member ECB Board – the most senior decision-making tier of English cricket. In other words, a private club – both unaccountable to, and exclusive from, the general cricketing public – has a direct say in the way our game is run. No other organisation of its kind enjoys this privilege. The MCC is not elected to this position – neither you nor I have any say in the matter – which it is free to use in furtherance of its own interests.

It was widely reported that, in April 2007, MCC’s then chief executive Keith Bradshaw played a leading part in the removal of Duncan Fletcher as England coach. If so, why? What business was it of his?

The MCC is cricket’s version of a hereditary peer – less an accident of history, but a convenient political arrangement between the elite powerbrokers of the English game. The reasoning goes like this: because once upon a time the MCC used to run everything, well, it wouldn’t really do to keep them out completely, would it? Especially as they’re such damn good chaps.

Why should the MCC alone enjoy so special a status, and no other of the thousands of cricket clubs in England? What’s so virtuous about it, compared to the club you or I belong to – which is almost certainly easier to join and more accessible.

What’s even more eccentric about the MCC’s place on the ECB board is that the entire county game only has three representatives. In the ECB’s reckoning, therefore, one private cricket club (which competes in no first-class competitions) deserves to have one-third of the power allocated to all eighteen counties and their supporters in their entirety.

The second stratum of MCC’s power lies in its role as custodian of the Laws of Cricket. The club decides – for the whole world – how the game shall be played, and what the rules are. From Dhaka to Bridgetown, every cricketer across the globe must conform to a code laid down in St John’s Wood, and – sorry to keep repeating this point, but it’s integral – by a private organisation in which they have no say.

Admittedly, the ICC is now also  involved in any revisions to the Laws, but the MCC have the final say, and own the copyright.

You could make a strong argument for the wisdom of delegating such a sensitive matter as cricket’s Laws to – in the form of MCC – a disinterested body with no sectional interests but the werewithal to muster huge expertise. That’s far better, the argument goes, than leaving it to the squabbling politicians of the ICC, who will act only in the selfish interests of their own nations.

But that said, the arrangement still feels peculiar, in an uncomfortable way. The ICC, and its constituent national boards, may be deeply flawed, but they are at least notionally accountable, and in some senses democratic. You could join a county club tomorrow and in theory rise up the ranks to ECB chairman. The ICC and the boards could be reformed without changing the concept underpinning their existence. None of these are true of the MCC.

Why does this one private club – and no others – enjoy such remarkable privileges? The answer lies in an interpretation of English cricket history which although blindly accepted by the establishment – and fed to us, almost as propaganda – is rather misleading.

History, as they often say, is written by the winners, and this is certainly true in cricket. From the early nineteenth century the MCC used its power, wealth and connections to take control of the game of cricket – first in England, and then the world. No one asked the club to do this, nor did they consult the public or hold a ballot. They simply, and unilaterally, assumed power, in the manner of an autocrat, and inspired by a similar sense of entitlement to that which built the British empire.

This private club, with its exclusive membership, ran test and domestic English cricket, almost on its own, until 1968. Then the Test and County Cricket Board was formed, in which the MCC maintained a hefty role until the creation of the ECB in 1997. The England team continued to play in MCC colours when overseas until the 1990s. Internationally, the MCC oversaw the ICC until as recently as 1993.

All through these near two centuries of quasi-monarchical rule, the MCC believed it was their divine right to govern. They knew best. Their role was entirely self-appointed, with the collusion of England’s social and political elite. At no stage did they claim to represent the general cricketing public, nor allow the public to participate in their processes.

The considerable authority the MCC still enjoys today derives not from its inherent virtues, or any popular mandate, but from its history. Because it has always had a leadership role, it will always be entitled to one.

The other bulwark of the MCC’s authority is predicated on the widespread assumption that the club virtually invented cricket, single-handedly. It was certainly one of the most influential clubs in the evolution of the game, and its codification in Victorian times, but far from the only one, and by no means the first. Neither did the MCC pioneer cricket’s Laws – their own first version was the fifth in all.

Hundreds of cricket clubs, across huge swathes of England, all contributed to the development of cricket into its modern form. The cast of cricket’s history is varied and complex – from the gambling aristocrats, to the wily promoters, the public schools, and the nascent county sides who invented the professional game as we know it now. Tens of thousands of individuals were involved, almost of all whom never went to Lord’s or had anything to thank the MCC for.

And that’s before you even start considering the countless Indians, West Indians, South Africans and especially Australians who all helped shape the dynamics, traditions and culture of our sport.

And yet it was the egg-and-bacon wearers who took all the credit. They appointed themselves leaders, and succeeded in doing so – due to the wealth, power and social connections of their membership. And because the winners write the history, the history says that MCC gave us cricket. It is this mythology which underpins their retention of power in the twenty first century.

Just to get things into perspective – I’m not suggesting we gather outside the Grace Gates at dawn, brandishing flaming torches. This is not an exhortation to storm the MCC’s ramparts and tear down the rose-red pavilion brick by brick until we secure the overthrow of these villainous tyrants.

In many ways the MCC is a force for good. It funds coaching and access schemes, gives aspiring young players opportunities on the ground staff, promotes the Spirit Of Cricket initiative, organises tours to remote cricketing nations, and engages in many charitable enterprises.

Their members may wear hideous ties and blazers, and usually conform to their snobbish and fusty stereotype, but no harm comes of that. As a private club, the MCC can act as it pleases, and do whatever it wants with Lord’s, which is its property.

But the MCC should have no say or involvement whatsoever in the running of English cricket. The club’s powers were never justifiable in the first place, and certainly not in the year 2012. The club must lose its place on the ECB Board. That is beyond argument.

As for the Laws, the MCC should bring their expertise to bear as consultants. But surely now the ultimate decisions should rest with the ICC.

Unpalatable though it may seem to hand over something so precious to so Byzantine an organisation, it is no longer fair or logical to expect every cricketer from Mumbai to Harare to dance to a St John’s Wood tune. This is an age in which Ireland and Afghanistan are playing serious cricket, and even China are laying the foundations. The process must be transparent, global, and participatory.

Cricket is both the beneficiary and victim of its history. No other game has a richer or more fascinating heritage, and ours has bequeathed a value system, international context, cherished rivalries, and an endless source of intrigue and delight.

But history is to be selected from with care – you maintain the traditions which still have value and relevance, and update or discard those which don’t. The role of the MCC is the apotheosis of this principle within cricket. For this private and morally remote club to still wield power in 2012 is as anachronistic as two stumps, a curved bat, and underarm bowling.

Radovan Karadžić awaits his verdict, but this is two-tier international justice

The ex-Bosnian Serb leader has been prosecuted, yet the war crimes tribunal resists calls to indict others

• 
• • Ed Vulliamy
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 30 September 2014 20.15 BST

Illustration by Belle Mellor

There he was, on the other side of the bullet-proof glass: Radovan Karadžić himself, inches away, accused of genocide and other war crimes across Bosnia during the 1990s. He saluted me with an entwinement of avuncular cordiality and cold-like-ice.

This was an “interview” to which Karadžić, defendant at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, is entitled before his prosecutors called me as a witness, back in 2010. During cross-examination, Karadžić posited the bizarre notion that only ONE person had died in the infamous concentration camp at Omarska it had been my curse to uncover in 1992.

This week, nearly five years after his trial began, come the closing arguments that will lead either to Karadžić’s acquittal or conviction for ordering the hurricane of violence he himself called ethnic cleansing between 1992 and 1995.

If nothing else, the prosecution will serve to remind us that carnage of that kind is still possible in modern Europe: death, torture, mass rape and mutilation in the camps; the siege and torture of a great European capital, Sarajevo; the summary massacre of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica. Karadžić has asked for 17 hours to outline his explanation for all this, under his alleged command.

Karadžić was political commissar of the Bosnian Serb project for a racially “pure” state during those years and, along with the verdict on his military counterpart, General Ratko Mladic, the outcome will be the highwater mark of the two-decade enterprise in what was to be groundbreaking international law enforcement by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

The man leading the Karadžić prosecution, Alan Tieger, was there at the outset prosecuting its first defendant in 1996, a parish-pump sadist and murderer called Dusko Tadic, now free after serving his sentence.

I was called by the tribunal in the early days, when it was lean, keen and felt right on its side. The court had been established in 1993 through both contrition and ambition. Contrition, because the UN had already become inept and cynical to the point of complicity in the slaughter it now sought to prosecute (though ironically, the worst was yet to come in 1995, when Dutch troops delivered the “safe area” of Srebrenica to the slaughter). Ambition, because the ICTY was seen as putting into action a brave new world of human rights, whereby the bullies of history would be held to account.

A lot can happen to a UN organism in 20 years. I testified in eight trials, have given months of work to the tribunal, and watched it bloat: heard clear language of law and liability replaced by jargon and anagrams; watched communication become a logjam of bureaucracy and hierarchy; listened to the wretched survivors summoned to testify, and wonder how much money was being made in their name. Answer: one hell of a lot.

But more important clouds have gathered over the ICTY. One concerns the promise – oft-spoken and crucial to the Hague’s raison d’etre – that its existence would deter mass murderers of the future. President Assad of Syria shows no sign of such quaking in his shoes.

A second was the tribunal’s extra-judicial brief: that it not only judge those accused, but also promote reconciliation. One of the tribunal’s major achievements has indeed been that the narrative of the war was told from witness chairs during “victim testimony”– the voices of the survivors. But there has been no reconciliation.

Bosnia is a living example, because there has been no reckoning. Reckoning, a prerequisite to reconciliation, is a harsher word which entails coming to terms with the calamity, staring at oneself in the mirror, and making amends – historical, political and material. This has not happened in a land still riven by partition as dictated by the vanities of the Dayton peace agreement, which ended the war by rewarding Karadžić’s project and granting his “Republika Srpska”, where children attend two schools under the same roof, where denial of the massacre at Srebrenica and concentration camps is still de rigeur and a means of maintaining power.

To this reality even 20 years on, the ICTY has added little or nothing: one could argue that more community-level bonding between ethnicities resulted last year from protests against privatisation, flooding, and the qualification of Bosnia’s football team for the World Cup in Brazil.

And doubts raised by recent verdicts have seemed to unravel the ICTY’s own work. Two rulings in the appeals chamber in 2012 and 2013 overturned the crucial convictions of the Croatian general Ante Gotovina and the commander of the Serbian (Yugoslav) army Momčilo Perišić. Chaired on both occasions by Judge Theodor Meron – a Holocaust survivor, former Israeli diplomat and US citizen – a majority of judges ruled that theevidence lacked “specific direction” to the troops under the generals’ command to commit atrocities. In other words, the buck stops short of the top, even when we all know war crimes have been committed.

This was galling for prosecutors because once the dramatic “victim testimony” was entered against small fry like Tadic, the hard, drier, work had been to establish chains of command that connected the political and military leaderships to the atrocities. For instance – in a tip to President Assad – the bench under Judge Meron deemed that to shell a community into the rubble until the survivors flee does not constitute deportation, since the emptying out of population was not “specifically directed”.

There were vehement dissenters from the bench in both cases: but back home, to illustrate the point about reconciliation, Bosnian Croats whooped and celebrated the liberty of Gotovina while spitting their outrage at that of Perišić; Bosnian Serbs did exactly the reverse. One’s own side cannot commit a war crime, it seems – only the enemy – in the land of un-reckoning.

But the most severe doubt about the ICTY, which does not concern its remit so much as its legacy, is who gets prosecuted in the brave new world of human rights. When Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in the Observer that former British prime minister Tony Blair should be indicted for war crimes in Iraq, he raised the question: how high are future indictments at the permanent international criminal court or other ad-hoc tribunals like the ICTY going to aim? So far, the ICC has failed to indict a single person who is white. It staunchly resisted calls for an indictment for General August Pinochet of Chile; Blair is not even on its radar screen, for all the archbishop’s pleading.

The questions remain, beyond Karadžić. Why Charles Taylor and not Blair, Bush or the Israeli bomber command that targeted schools in Lebanon and civilian shelters in Gaza? At what point does the ICC address environmental or corporate crime: mining companies before which entire communities in Africa and Latin America vanish, or banks involved in systematic laundering of the profits of drug cartels?

Legal philosopher Costas Douzinas has written a book daring to suggest that “human rights” are becoming tools of the powerful nations, more than sacrosanct principles as defined by his ancestors in Greece, the French revolutionaries and Tom Paine.

It has been a long, worthwhile haul from the Tadic trial to that of Karadžić, and an acquittal over “specific direction” would be grotesque while the earth still gives up its dead around Srebrenica and the camps. But after that, for Douzinas to be proved wrong, the lucrative carousel of international justice needs to raise, not lower, its sights.

On Sledging - Anderson England's guilty pleasure

There is an uncomfortable recognition that the beauty of James Anderson's cricket comes with a professionalism that has been taken to the limits but weak umpiring has to share the blame

David Hopps in Cricinfo

As James Anderson prepares to face an ICC enquiry into his alleged misconduct during the Trent Bridge Test, it is hard to suppress a feeling of frustration about how this wonderful fast bowler has been allowed to become England's guilty pleasure.

Anderson is close to the apex of a fulfilling career, only 12 more wickets needed to draw equal with Ian Botham as England's leading Test wicket-taker. He is championed in England as a true craftsman among fast bowlers, a manipulator of a cricket ball who deserves to stand alongside the best.

And yet, this faith in his bowling purity sits uneasily with a sullied reputation; a player now well known to all but the most casual follower of the game as one of the most ingrained sledgers around and, a natural development, who allegedly has now tipped over into the pushing of Ravindra Jadeja as well. It does not take long to find an opponent, or a past opponent, who says there is nobody worse - even if they then admit it is a crowded field. It should never have come to this.

This then is England's guilty pleasure: on one side, the shy craftsman who became one of the finest fast bowlers in the world; on the other, the Burnley Lip, whose abuse of opponents has been incessant for many years. Many in the game will tell you it doesn't matter a jot. It does. Cricket has a problem - and it needs to deal with it before everybody starts to grow Luis Suarez fangs.

It is important to observe - and his captain, Alastair Cook, was shrewd enough to do so from the start - that the ICC code of conduct commissioner, Gordon Lewis, a retired Australian judge, has been appointed to judge one specific incident at Trent Bridge, about which the details remain at issue, and not to pass opinion on a verbally-strewn career.

The ICC's judgment, in the simplest terms, will determine whether Anderson is banned from his home Test at Old Trafford next week, and perhaps for the rest of the series. For many, that outcome is all that matters. It might swing a Test series towards India in the process, although the suggestion that this is India's reasoning is overly cynical.

This is not a tactic; this is a campaign. And once Lewis makes his ruling, we will wait to discover if it is the first campaign of many or if Anderson is to be its sole victim. A trophy killing for India's mantelpiece.

Anderson's fate will be determined on whether video evidence really does exist - India say so, but they might be bluffing - and on the dubious testimony of witnesses about Who Pushed Who When, Who Said What To Whom, all of which tittle-tattle should be enough to make Lewis wonder whether he should be doing better things with his life.

Cricket's fate will take longer to determine. What we may also be experiencing is the start of India agitation against persistent on-field abuse, a habit resented for its disrespect and occasionally because of its implied threat of physical violence. The reality is that only India is empowered to change the nature of the game - to say "we will not play this way". What is less unclear is whether it has the will to try to transform the way the game is played - or whether perhaps Lewis' ruling will carry wider encouragement for cricket to clean up its act.

We may know a lot more about the repercussions by Christmas. If India, and in particular their captain MS Dhoni, have taken a stand against what they regard as Anderson's excess, how will they respond when India pitch up for a Test series in Australia? They have acted independently of the umpires and match referees once. If Lewis rules in their favour, will they feel obliged to do it again?

If Mitchell Johnson snarls from underneath his vaudevillian moustache, will India be consistent and immediately lay a charge with the ICC? If David Warner yaps like a dog for much of a session, as he once stupidly did to irritate Faf du Plessis, will another charge be laid? If Shane Watson adds some sly words of his own, will three Australians be in the dock?

	Was Ajinkya Rahane's melodramatic response at the end of day four a sign of India's zero tolerance approach to verbal abuse? © Getty Images  Enlarge

Anderson's alleged push of Jadeja is presented as the catalyst for the complaint, but it was his reputation as a serial sledger that made Dhoni so anxious to pursue it. Anderson was charged because he has form - the alleged push was just a chance to get even. And physical contact, incidentally, is not necessarily needed to win a case. There is plenty in the ICC Code of Conduct that pretends to punish verbal abuse. It is just that nobody ever presses charges.

While England is invited to regard Anderson as a guilty pleasure, international umpires and the ICC must be feeling nervous. If India is embarking upon an attempted clean up, the umpires will need to intervene in a manner they have not seen fit to do for years. If they do, it will be long overdue. What we have at the moment is a sham.

So much in cricket is disingenuous. The Spirit of Cricket has become a widely-ridiculed moral salad dressing on a game where umpires allow verbal aggression to go unchecked in the misguided belief that they are permitting the vital confrontational elements that enhance the game at the highest level. As long as the invective isn't aimed at them, as long as nobody actually makes physical contact, they are only concerned with ensuring the public does not know too much.

Most of us - at whatever level we play the game - relish a clever sledge, most of us permit a physically-straining fast bowler a display of frustration, most of us don't mind a bit of backchat, but umpires have utterly failed in their duty to check the incessant boorish behaviour that has now become regarded as just a daily reality. Where were they when Anderson indulged in his 30-metre rant at Jadeja as the players walked off for tea? Where is the dividing line? Is everything acceptable unless you actually push someone? It is time we were honestly told.

Instead, we have Anderson, the essentially gentle guy trying to play tough; the diffident figure who has been told by coaches to become more aggressive; the man who could barely spit out a sentence in press conferences at the start of his career, transformed into a venomous on-field malcontent; a natural leader of no-one proudly bowling more Test overs than anyone in the world as he forever strives to be the Leader of the Attack; a talented, likeable lad who has been gradually lulled by this failure of umpires and administrators to rule and has developed, in his immense desire to win Tests for England, into a twisted, nastier on-field personality than he really is.

Considering all the jokes about his grumpiness - his best mate, Graeme Swann, loves to joke that it takes a couple of beers to cheer him up - this role play does not seem to have made him very happy.

As England celebrated an overwhelming victory at the Ageas Bowl, Anderson's hugs with his team-mates seemed slightly troubled. A few minutes later, he was collecting another magnum of champagne, another man-of-the-match award logged. He had produced his finest all-round performance for a year, a display summoned out of adversity, adversity not just for himself, but for his captain, Alastair Cook, and indeed the entire England Test set-up.

	While we cherish Anderson's skill, we prefer to be spared a truth. The abuse has become the sourness we would rather not recognise

It was a pleasure to see Anderson and Stuart Broad remembering once again how to play with joy - "play with the happiness of your first Test," the coach, Peter Moores had urged them as he sought to arrest England's worst run for 20 years, and England's senior players, as one, had released the yoke from their back. England kept their lips buttoned - and won by a country mile.

But on the one occasion that Anderson allowed himself some backchat - a sentence or two to Ajinkya Rahaneat the end of the fourth day - the response from Rahane was so melodramatic that India's zero tolerance policy was abundantly clear. Was this personal animosity, a tactical manoeuvre ahead of the hearing or further proof a long-term attempt to change the nature of the game?

Anderson's post-match interviews, as ever, were conducted in that vulnerable, polite, halting style. It is the Anderson that England wish to celebrate: the self-effacing, bashful sportsman who has succeeded in a physically-demanding, confrontational job. We would rather dwell on his 371 Test wickets and not wonder about his tally of C words when the game gets tough.

His newly-adopted beard looks like a defence mechanism against the uproar surrounding him. When he was asked after the match if he was confident about the outcome of the hearing, his "don't know" response sounded abashed. There was no petulant strut, no words of defiance, just a world-class player trapped in a behavioural mode that might be about to bring suspension.

While we cherish Anderson's skill, we prefer to be spared this truth. The abuse has become the sourness we would rather not recognise: the stain on the luxury, hand-woven carpet; the dodgy financial dealings that produce the beautiful marina; the uncomfortable recognition that the beauty of Anderson's cricket comes with a professionalism that has been taken to the limits. The alleged push has finally forced us to take notice.

We all know this: fans, team-mates, opponents, former players, umpires, administrators, all playing our part in this endless charade.

The ECB defends Anderson because it wants to win the series and protect its players; no thoughts here - not publicly anyway - of the wider picture. The ICC just bleats that the authority of the enquiry has been compromised because both Dhoni and Cook have passed comment on the situation, more concerned with systems and processes than the long-term health of the game.

Meanwhile, James Anderson, is hung out to dry.

And nobody is imposing, for all of us to see, the behavioural standards by which the game should be run.

Cricket to become a private club

Daniel Brettig in Cricinfo

Melbourne is something of a Mecca for private members clubs. From the Melbourne Club and the Australian Club to the Kelvin Club and the Melbourne Cricket Club itself, the private meetings of well-heeled businessmen in wood-panelled dining rooms by open fires, all members by invitation only, are part of the fabric of the city. On Albert Street in East Melbourne the United Grand Lodge of Victoria stares forbiddingly down towards the MCG - who can forget that Sir Donald Bradman was himself a Freemason?

So it is entirely fitting that international cricket's redefinition as a private club, with the BCCI's banned board president N Srinivasan crowned as its omnipotent chairman, will take place in the MCC Members Dining Room this week. Since 1877 the MCG has hosted all manner of cricketing feats, but not since that first Test match between Australia and England has it been the scene of a more significant moment than this.

A re-shaping of the international game that began more or less in secret, during meetings between Srinivasan, the ECB chairman Giles Clarke and the Cricket Australia chairman Wally Edwards over the past two years, will reach fruition at the ICC's annual conference. While the broad resolutions for the new landscape have been known since January, their inking into law will be the point of completion, and some contemplation. There can be no going back from here.

After Thursday's centrepiece conference meeting the ICC's constitution will be changed drastically, setting up the boards of the "big three" nations as commercially-motivated navigators for cricket, and abandoning much of the expansionist vision favoured by ICC management in recent years. Instead the game's current balance of power will be definitively entrenched, as India, England and Australia take a larger slice of revenue from ICC events in addition to their existing windfalls from bilateral tours.

The game's most influential decision-making will no longer take place at the executive board table but at the more exclusive meetings of ExCo, the five-member working group that will have UN security council-styled permanent membership for the BCCI, ECB and CA. Edwards will chair ExCo for one year and his CA successor David Peever, the next. Clarke is already head of the ICC's finance committee, and Srinivasan's coronation will complete the triumvirate.

Srinivasan's ascension will take place despite the reservations of many. The Supreme Court of India has barred Srinivasan from his duties as BCCI president while the investigation into corrupt activities around the IPL and Chennai Super Kings is ongoing: members of the ICC's executive board have personally expressed to him their preference for Srinivasan to refrain from taking the international post until it has concluded. The conflict of interest inherent in Srinivasan's ownership of Super Kings alongside his cricket administration has also been mentioned, but always excused by the fact the BCCI allowed it.

Chief among those expressing caution has been Edwards, an architect of vast governance change at CA but compelled to work more pragmatically at the ICC. Earlier this month he reportedly called Srinivasan to discuss the implications of his appointment as chairman while still under investigation, and to seek reassurance that there would be no surprises later on if he did take up the post this week. The image of President Nixon's second inauguration playing on a newsroom television at the Washington Post while Woodward and Bernstein tap out the stories that will lead to his resignation spring to mind.

"We respect the right of each nation to nominate their representative on the ICC," Edwards said ahead of the conference. "With that comes great responsibility to ensure representatives comply with the standards required to govern the game. I have been assured by Mr Srinivasan, legally and by ICC management that there is nothing preventing the BCCI putting him forward as a candidate for chairman. I accept that and am confident that Mr Srinivasan can play an important role in strengthening world cricket."

Edwards is well aware of said standards as the primary author of a new ethics code for the ICC board and administration, a document broader in some senses but more restrictive in others. Accusations against members can now only be made by fellow signatories of the code, a change that underlines the shift to private membership values as much as anything else. The responsibilities of members to act in the best interests of the ICC itself have been stripped away, instead they will be freed up to do whatever their own countries would best prefer, formalising a mindset of self-interest that has long existed. Should Srinivasan be removed in the future, it will be under the terms of this code.

But Srinivasan is nothing if not determined, and in repeatedly asserting his innocence of any wrongdoing has persuaded the executive board, the BCCI and the Supreme Court that allegations of major impropriety should not stop him from taking the role. India's administrators seem largely content to allow Srinivasan to represent them overseas, while there appears to be little will to prevent his coronation in Melbourne - a repeat of the John Howard coup de'tat at the 2010 conference in Singapore looks unlikely.

As significant as the unveiling of the new chairman will be the long-delayed and much debated signing of the Members Participation Agreement for ICC events. This document, and the BCCI's refusal to sign it until the shape of the game was changed to reflect its view of the world and financial contribution to it, was the catalyst for cricket's current direction. There will be little fanfare around the boards putting pen to paper, but the gravity of the moment will not be lost on those in the room.

Elsewhere the game's Associate and Affiliate members will be forced to swallow numerous changes, including a raising of the bar in terms of membership criteria, and the loss of the revenue they will gain from ICC events relative to the old structure. The carrot of Test match participation will be dangled, but only over the course of an eight-year cycle. World Cup participation is also set to be restricted, as the tournament reverts to a 10-team model after next year's edition in Australia and New Zealand.

Other vestiges of earlier attempts by ICC management to broaden the game will be removed. A report into the possibility of cricket at the Olympics will be tabled, confirming why it will never happen so long as India and England have anything to do with the decision. The ACSU, cricket's independent watchdog for corruption, will soon be asked to report not to the ICC chief executive but to ExCo and the executive board. Whatever the current chairman Sir Ronnie Flanagan has said about preserving the unit's independence, the new model cannot be said to have done so.

Finally, after the conference concludes, members will sit down to the serious business of their first committee and board meetings under the new structure. Friday and Saturday will be taken up by the first acts of the new order, as Srinivasan, Edwards and Clarke chair the meetings of the private members club they have created. There will be no funny hats or ancient robes, but the tone, form and function of cricket's governance will reflect nothing so much as the clubs of Melbourne and beyond. The words of the Stonecutters' anthem immortalised by The Simpsons will seem a fitting accompaniment:

Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down? We do, we do!

Who keeps Atlantis off the maps? Who keeps the Martians under wraps? We do, we do!

The hijacking of cricket, once again!

Tell the administrators you're watching them

International cricket's top three seem to be planning a hostile takeover of the game. Do you want to stop them?

Jarrod Kimber

January 18, 2014

 

	If the draft proposal is passed, India will have more power in world cricket than they already enjoy © AFP  Enlarge

The fact that Australia, England and India have formed a cabal to choke the game of cricket is not exactly new. Like a bum with a sandwich board, myself and others have been walking the streets of cricket shouting this message for a long time. During the Champions Trophy I wrote that only the top threein cricket matter. Before that I started making a documentary on the death of Test cricket. And during this Boxing Day Test at the MCG, I was chatting toABC Grandstand about it.

If you follow cricket politicking at all (and I do, so you don't have too), you could see this coming. So it was nice that Sharda Ugra showed that it was not just a conspiracy theory by a few nut jobs. That it was a real takeover of cricket by the greedy and wealthy.

But what does this leaked draft actually mean, and is the ICC financial and commercial committee actually run by giant lizards? I tried to answer a few questions that people had.

In a word, good or bad for Test cricket?
Bad, not just for Tests, but for all international cricket.

If there is promotion and relegation in Test cricket, but Australia, England and India can't be relegated, isn't that cheating?
It's not just cheating, it's organised fixing. Any individual who signs off on a regulation like this is corrupting the game, and should be banned by the ICC for their action. They are ensuring the result of the competition before a game is played. The integrity of the game is corrupted as much as by any huge no-ball. They might as well only let other teams use five batsmen, bowl with beach balls and field with sponsored flippers on. As long as the sponsorship money is split unfairly, favouring the stronger nation.

Who are the people involved in this secret dossier for cricket's potential kidnapping?
The names of the people on the committee that the draft came from are Giles Clarke (chairman, ECB), Alan Isaac (ICC president), Dave Richardson (chief executive), N Srinivasan (BCCI), Neil Speight (Associate and Affiliate member, Bermuda Cricket Board), Wally Edwards (CA), Dave Cameron (WICB), Campbell Jamieson (GM, commercial) and Faisal Hasnain (CFO).

But the big winners, if the draft was implemented, would be Clarke, Srinivasan and Edwards. It is they who will be taking over cricket officially on behalf of their boards. We don't have the details of who the architects of the plan are, but being that these men and their boards get the best deal, it's not a big stretch to believe they were behind it. I doubt the Bermuda chairman acted alone in this.

What did the FTP do? What does FTP stand for and why does it matter?
The FTP is (was?) the Future Tours Programme. It essentially meant that teams would have to play everyone, and not just who they wanted to play with. It was brought in to ensure that teams had a schedule to play each other and ICC tournaments. It helped sell TV rights and aided smaller nations financially by drawing them up against teams with larger markets and on the cricket field through experience against the best teams. It was a flawed but well-meaning system of sharing the wealth and making cricket fairer.

Wasn't the FTP ignored?
Occasionally. It was more a nagging aunty than a scary prison guard. I know Australia have played Bangladesh, I just can't remember when. And Bangladesh have never toured India. Things are moved around on a whim quite often, but it at least meant that if something did happen, like Sri Lanka and West Indies cancelling their Test series, they had to come out and say it, not just silently agree never to play again. No FTP makes it all a bit more covert and easier for board members to ruin things without us noticing.

	We have no vote in cricket. All we have is our passion, which is what makes the money that gives these men their power

Why does it matter if the big three countries make more money from ICC tournaments and share the ICC top jobs? Don't they already own and run cricket?
Yes, they do. But it matters because cricket isn't limited to three nations, or even ten. There are 106 member nations of the ICC. If this structural upheaval happens, less money and no power will escape this evil cricket cabal. These dirty three will be able to continue to rule cricket forever for their own good. And they'll have the backing of cricket's governing body, which will essentially be them in all but name.

Will cricket's best interests really be looked after by these three nations?
One recently got involved with a fraudulent crook; the second stopped players picking who they wanted to represent them at the ICC level; and the final one wanted all the other nations locked out of the World Cup.

Isn't the current ICC set-up terrible anyway?
If by that you mean there are no votes at ICC boardrooms, that it's run by the ten Test-playing boards who are all out for their own good and that India have all the financial muscle, then yes. The Woolf Report, an independent evaluation of the ICC (that the boards never wanted, and of which they ignored all but the bits that helped them keep their stranglehold), suggested that cricket needed to be independently run, instead of by the member boards. But at least the current set-up, as pointless and ignored as it is, gave ten nations a say.

Sport is a business, and this is just a business decision, isn't it?
It is a business decision. A bad one. A short-term one. Like most decisions made by cricket officials, it follows the money where it is right now. It doesn't look ahead. It doesn't grow the game or improve it. It picks cricket up by its underwear and takes what is in its pocket.

Surprisingly, most billion-dollar businesses aren't run by unpaid men who face absolutely no consequence if they completely stuff up the business. Who would have thought a billion-dollar business run by amateurs with no independent management could be taken over so easily?

Should Bangladesh prepare for a five-Test match tour of Australia, England or India shortly?
No.

Which Full Members outside the trio will be playing Test cricket by 2020?
It is impossible to tell. But this is not a move to lock in the future of the current Test-playing nations. It is a move to lock in the future of three of them. The rest can go to hell, and by hell, I mean more Champions Trophy tournaments.

I'm from outside the cricket cabal but don't really like Test cricket. Why should I care?
Because the FTP and ICC restructuring isn't just about Tests. It's about stopping your country from getting money. It's about ensuring through financial means that while three countries will have every single advantage, the others will have to live on far less. Money doesn't guarantee success. But it certainly helps in sport.

I'm from inside the cabal. Why should I care about the other nations?
Maybe you shouldn't. You'll have all the IPL, Big Bash and Ashes you can eat. But if the other seven teams stop playing Test cricket, or don't play enough to make it relevant, you're going to get pretty damn bored pretty damn quickly. And while you may only watch for your own players, do you really want to live in a world that involves less Sri Lankan mystery spin, New Zealand pluckiness, Misbah-ul-Haq, and the current best Test team on earth?

What will happen to the non-Test playing nations?
Not much will actually change for them. Life wasn't exactly free beer and endless casual sexual encounters before. If anything, now they have seven new friends who also have no power.

Can saner people in the future undo this mess?
Yes, probably. Even the old veto was eventually taken away from the ICC. Things can change. If the chairmen of the three cricket boards were to change, it could change very quickly. There is also little doubt that at least one of Clarke, Srinivasan and Edwards wants to eventually run the ICC once the main job there is made more powerful. Which means this reign of bullying and grabbing for power may not end anytime soon.

Should these three men step down?
Yes. Anyone who agreed with this draft, whether it was their idea or not, should leave cricket immediately. They won't, obviously. But they should.

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel?
Someone leaked this draft. Someone who saw it realised that cricket fans wouldn't like this, and instead of it being announced through an ICC press release, it was blurted out before they had a chance to lock it in. In fact, there are many good people working in cricket all around the world. They don't like this situation any more than we do. Hopefully more of them will step forward with details. That gives us a chance.

What can I do?
Contact them. Don't be rude, don't abuse the people who are answering the emails, calls or letters, but contact them. Tell them what you think of all this. CA can be contacted here, the ECB here, the BCCI here. We have no vote in cricket. All we have is our passion, which is what makes the money that gives these men their power.

They are banking on you not knowing or caring about any of this. Giles Clarke regularly tells young cricket writers to stop writing about administration because it's boring and fans don't care about it. What this does is allow cricket's most important men to run the game while no one is watching. Show them you're watching.

If you have time to complain about a shocking DRS decision or a terrible cover drive, surely you have time to send an email to the men running the game. Show them you care. Tell them what you think. You have no vote in cricket's future. But you do have the contact pages.