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A matter of Life and Trust

by thelegglance

Like so many others, the activities of the last couple of days have left me in despair about cricket in England.  That the ECB can invoke a question of trust in their carefully rehearsed PR speak was roundly met with hollow laughs amongst professionals, amateurs and supporters alike.  So much of the focus has been on Kevin Pietersen for obvious reasons, yet the ECB will be perversely pleased by that, because it avoids the wider questions and the wider problems.

That Pietersen has been treated dreadfully is a given even amongst those who are not remotely his fans – and let’s nail this particular straw man argument right here, there are a tiny number of people who are proper, out and out Pietersen fans.  Most of the others are England fans who may or may not think the side would be better with him in it, but believe a team should be selected from its best players, and who know a stitch up when they see one.

There is no doubt at all that Graves told him it was a clean slate, not just from his public pronouncements, but in two phone calls.  Pietersen responded to that by giving up his IPL contract to come and play county cricket.   He did what was asked of him.  Pietersen might be wealthy, but making someone give up a contract worth hundreds of thousands is not a small matter.  There have been some comments that Graves is just one person and that no guarantees were given.  This is sophistry of the highest order.  That one person is the incoming chairman of the ECB, and Pietersen trusted what he said.  More than that, if he has gone out on a limb then there was plenty of opportunity for the likes of Tom Harrison to talk to him and tell him that was not ECB policy.  He didn’t do so.

Let’s call this what it is – a lie.  They lied to him, an action of both commission and omission.  Pietersen might be a controversial figure, but he did not and does not deserve that.  At no point yesterday has there been so much as a hint of an apology for that.  That is outrageous behaviour.  Whataboutery concerning Pietersen is not the issue at hand here – it wasn’t him that kept banging on about trust.  The ECB are the organisation comprised of people that promptly leaked the outcome of Pietersen’s meeting with Strauss and Harrison minutes after it happened, the organisation on whose watch the coach Peter Moores found out he was being sacked via the media before they’d bothered to tell him (leaks or otherwise is irrelevant to this – it’s what happened), who backed Alastair Cook vocally two days before sacking him as ODI captain, who allowed a private memo from the England captain in 2009 to leak to the press.  What Pietersen has or has not done over the years does not for a single second justify any of this.  To talk about trust is a sick joke.

Nasser Hussain tried to make the point that trust has to go both ways, and Strauss’s response that he isn’t blaming anyone for the breakdown of it simply isn’t good enough.  He can refuse to talk about where Pietersen is at fault, that’s his prerogative, but he cannot avoid the complicity of the ECB, the organisation he works for.  Tom Harrison apologised to Peter Moores for how he found out about his sacking.  An apology to Kevin Pietersen for being led up the garden path is the very minimum that is needed.

It’s not going to happen of course.  The arrogance of the ECB knows no limits.  Over a year later they still haven’t addressed the realities of the “Outside Cricket” jibe and the utter contempt that signified for those who buy tickets and play the game.  And here is the fundamental question of trust as it really is, not as the ECB would like it to be.  There is none for the ECB.  The way Pietersen has been treated – and indeed the way Moores was treated – are indicative of an organisation that considers human beings to be commodities and nothing more.  Losing the trust of individuals barely scratches at the surface of the problem, because despite the ECB’s apparent belief, the public are not stupid.  They can see how this translates into a wider lack of interest or concern for anyone that doesn’t fit into their narrow field of vision.

The media response has been  fairly predictable in the way it has gone down the usual lines.  What the ones who loathe Pietersen fail to understand is that it is not about that, it is entirely within their rights to despise him and not want him anywhere near the England team while at the same time recognising that the ECB have behaved poorly.  The inability of some of them to see things through anything other than a Pietersen prism is the reason they attract such contempt.  If Pietersen is a side show to the wider issue, then deal with the wider issue.  Being an apologist for awful ECB conduct is not journalism, it is cheerleading.  Let’s put it a different way, if it was someone other than Pietersen who was the central player in the drama, would there be such fawning coverage of the ECB itself? This goes to the crux of the matter, because if not, then it means that they need to ask themselves about the job they are doing – their loathing of Pietersen is blinding them to what are far more important questions.

It is abundantly clear Pietersen is not coming back.  So given that, it raises a whole series more questions about where we go from here.

The first thing that Strauss and Harrison talked about was the plan for 2019.  In itself, this is hardly surprising – all new arrivals give themselves a nebulous target some time in the distant future, usually when they’re fairly certain the near term is going to be catastrophic and don’t want to be blamed for it.  But there are a couple of things about that.  By focusing so relentlessly on it, they invite ridicule that it’s tantamount to a Soviet Five Year Plan that was simply replaced by another Five Year Plan when the previous one went wrong.  In one day cricket, England cleared the decks for the World Cup, moved the Ashes with spectacular – in one sense anyway – results.  Yet now they are telling us not to worry, there’s another new plan coming along, and this one will be a belter.

Ah, but we should trust them we are told.  Why?  For what reason should we trust these people who have made a monumental mess of everything they have touched.  Trust needs to be earned, as  Strauss himself banged on about with that terrified look in his eye, but he apparently again didn’t grasp that the horrible masses don’t believe him.

It’s nothing more than a permanent offer of jam tomorrow.  That can work for a bit, yet they drew much greater attention to it by self-evidently rejecting a player who might be of value in the here and now.  Anyone over the age of about 15 can remember rotten England teams, but it’s been a fair while since having a weakened side was specific policy.

The Ashes this summer are not sold out.  It’s not disastrously so, but it’s not brilliant either.  Next summer we have Sri Lanka (again – though doubtless they’ll compensate for that by not playing them again until about 2030) and Pakistan.  If ticket sales are struggling for this year, what on earth is going to be like next year?  The blasé talk about what happens in four years time is surely not a deliberate writing off of the near term, but once again it does give the impression of it, which is exceptionally clumsy, even if not intended.  Those who have bought tickets are perfectly entitled to ask what the point of going is if the current team is not the focus.  It can’t especially cheer up the players either.

Buried in the detail was the sacking of Ian Bell as vice captain and Stuart Broad as T20 captain. Poor Bell.  He seems to be the favoured whipping boy, there’s no question that he has been briefed against – when Cook’s position came under scrutiny for captaincy (not exactly a rare event) there were a slew of articles talking about how badly Bell had done in team building events to make it clear he wasn’t a viable alternative.  This is a minor matter in relative terms, but once again a player suffers in certain media quarters when the status quo is under threat.  Broad’s removal as T20 captain is less surprising in itself, but replacing him with Eoin Morgan perhaps is, given his recent troubles.  Broad might wonder quite how he has been booted while the Test captain is so strongly backed.

As for Cook himself, although at first sight it seems he’s been thoroughly backed, in reality he’s already been given notice on his captaincy.  The appointment of Root as his second in command is the first time the ECB have deliberately chosen someone who they feel (the “they” is important here) can take over.  The ECB are plainly not optimistic about this summer, and Cook now appears to be in place as a firebreak for when it all goes horribly wrong.  Not remotely the first time they’ve used this tactic, and whatever the opinions on Cook, it seems quite likely he is the next sacrificial lamb.  What that does suggest though, is that the Ashes themselves are not regarded as the priority.  It may also just be dawning on Cook that if he doesn’t win this summer, he’s probably out (it is the ECB of course.  So they could decide to grant him life tenure – funny how we don’t trust them…), and therefore if Vaughan is right and Cook said he would resign if Pietersen was recalled, then he’s signed his own death warrant by refusing to include a player who might give them a better chance, and thus him a better chance of keeping the captaincy.

And then we come to the question of the coach.  The sacking of Moores was nothing other than a panic response.  That he shouldn’t have been appointed in the first place doesn’t alter the truth that Moores had a point when he complained he hadn’t been given enough time.  Although you could equally argue he’d had far too much time given the results were pretty dire, if you are going to appoint a coach with a brief to build a new team, and then sack him a year later when the said new team doesn’t do too well then you’ve sold him a pup.

Both Strauss and Harrison responded to questions about Jason Gillespie by saying that he is certainly one of those they will want to talk to.  In ECB speak, this is tantamount to openly saying he hasn’t got a prayer, because the front runner never seems to get the job with them.

The Pietersen affair has rightly re-opened the question as to what sort of coach will take on a role where certain players are denied to them through policy.  It may well be the case that Gillespie wouldn’t want Pietersen anywhere near the team, but there has to be significant risk that he will feel having that principle enforced at a level above him will be considered an interference in his ability to do his job.  There remains the feeling that the lack of high profile coaches applying last time was directly related to interference in team selection.  And here’s the rub – if by their actions against Pietersen they have limited their ability to obtain the best coach, that is a far wider impact than a single player, and a direct failure on the part of the ECB to do their job.   This has already happened with the choice of Director, Cricket (I wonder how much it cost to have the consultants decide on that format?) where Vaughan hinted, and Stewart openly stated, that they would want to select from all players.  Repeating this with the coach is an abrogation of their responsibilities to English cricket to play the best team, with the best support staff, to give them the best chance of winning.

The ECB have tried to pretend the Pietersen omnishambles is a discrete issue.  It isn’t, it pervades everything they are doing and everything they have done.  The consequences of it are ongoing and extremely deep.  If high quality coaches are uninterested in the England job because of how they’ve dealt with Pietersen, that is appalling mismanagement not of a single player, but of the entire England structure.

The question must be posed, what is the ECB actually for?  If it is a governing body of cricket domestically, then their lack of interest in the game below the exalted professional level is a savage indictment of them not doing their job in any way.  Participation levels have dropped, viewing figures for England on Sky are now lower than they are for darts.  There are huge swathes of supporters disaffected and disillusioned.  Ed Smith’s ridiculous attempt to claim that all those NOT using social media are silently delighted with the ECB merely reinforces the cosy image of those Inside Cricket, talking amongst themselves.  They don’t see the anger, and are taken aback by it, because they don’t understand why.  The ECB hierarchy see the world through the prism of their own experiences, while the media have absolutely no idea whatever about the supporters and their world.  When did any of the journalists last queue for 90 minutes to get a beer?  When did they last find themselves squeezed into a tiny seat with inadequate legroom?  When did they discover that lunchtime is a terrible time to try and get some food at a Test?

They have no idea about any of this, because it’s not part of their world.  The reaction to the Pietersen debacle is one of puzzlement as much as anything else – the confusion of people for whom the masses might as well be speaking a different language.  There is simply no doubt the ECB have succeeded in keeping the bulk of the cricket press onside, while at the same time driving a huge wedge between them and the wider cricketing public.  Bloggers, commenters and tweeters might not be representative of the wider public (although they might well be too), but they are extremely important for one reason alone – they tend to be the kind who care sufficiently to consider buying tickets.   How many bilious inadequates not attending does it take to become noticeable?  One for you to work out Ed.

It’s a matter of trust we are told.  There is none.  And the worst part of it is, they don’t even realise why it is, or what they’ve done wrong.  That’s why there are some English cricket fans actively hoping for Australia to hammer England this summer.  Think about that.  That’s the ECB legacy.  Well done chaps.

The age of player power

Players, emboldened by free agency, agents and endorsements, are now asserting their rights as never before - and management doesn't like it

Rob Steen in Cricinfo

October 29, 2014

  

Michael Holding is among those who feel the West Indies players have been cast in the role of sinners in the latest saga © BCCI

Big hitter wanted. Must be comfortable handling money, schmoozing Australian media magnates, worshipping at the Church of Broadcasting on an hourly basis, maintaining an unholy trinity of power, changing course at the drop of a hat, staging events that lack context or go on too long, and treating the talent like worker ants (which of course they are). Imagination, a working set of principles and a capacity to think more than five minutes ahead nice but not essential. Cricketing experience would also be nice, but ex-professionals need not apply. Did we stress "no women" enough? All right then, NO WOMEN.

The "Positions Vacant" column at ICC Towers or BCCI HQ could never adopt that precise wording, of course. The sentiments, nonetheless, wouldn't be terribly different, not in essence. Perhaps the fondest and most self-deluding perception we cricket fanciers suffer from is the idea that, as a species, the game's administrators have the game at heart. Or anywhere remotely near it.

This is why a globally respected former player told me last week, after I'd urged him, for the good of the game, to put on his best suit and apply for his mandarin's licence, that he would just as soon buy a return flight to the sun, or even a lifetime's subscription to the Sun. This is also the fundamental reason why cricket in the Caribbean has just been dumped into what may well prove to be the deepest, muddiest, smelliest bogthis grand old game of ours has ever had the nose-holding, arm's-length displeasure to behold.

As Michael Holding related in his column for Wisden India, the roots of the duel between Dwayne Bravo et al and the West Indies Cricket Board lie in the latter's quest for revenge on the uppity West Indies Players' Association. And not over the shenanigans of Chris Gayle or Sunil Narine - or at least, not directly - but over the insistence that the board honour a pay rise to the players approved by its former CEO, Dr Ernest Hilaire.

To be fair, the CEO had been "conned" - as Holding put it - into sending the incriminating email by Dinanath Ramnarine, the former WIPA president and chief executive (indeed, Holding took a current WIPA official out for dinner and made no bones about his anger at such a shameless stunt). That, though, was scant consolation to Hilaire, or the WICB.

There can be little question, given its lamentable track record in player relations - a track record that has made the WIPA one of the most militant players' unions anywhere - that the WICB deserves public humiliation. And public humiliation can propel even the most intelligent and far-seeing fellows to the most asinine of reactions. Trouble is, when it comes to cricket officials - or, for that matter, officials of any sporting, showbiz or political creed - presumptions of intelligence and foresight may be unduly kind.

Holding, it should be added, has never been a rabid advocate of players' rights. That underlying ambivalence - towards the WICB as well as his on-field successors - has been easy to understand. To someone such as him, a Jamaican for whom playing for West Indies meant something more than representing a region, the ever-rising emphasis on financial reward can at times seem odious. When he was skittling all those England batsmen at The Oval in 1976, Holding will assure you, a win bonus or enhanced contract was an additional, minor incentive, not a cause. The revolution he was fighting, though, has been more or less won; now another needs winning.

That's why Holding has been unable to contain his fury, taking up cudgels on behalf of players who he feels (and not without extremely good reason) have been shat upon from a considerable height and cast, inevitably, as scapegoats. That the owner of the calmest, coolest, unshrillest voice in the menagerie we call the commentary box should feel compelled to raise it to such a pitch should not, cannot, be dismissed lightly.

That Bravo et al cannot even trust their own union rep, Wavell Hinds, ironically a long-time friend of Bravo's as well as a pal of Dave Cameron, the WICB president, emphasises how toxic things have got. Likewise Marlon Samuels' non-solidarity.

****

One of the under-appreciated benefits of the IPL is that it has empowered the players. Now, finally, the wealthy (and not undeserving) few have a shot at controlling their own destinies, free of club or board interference. This has also led down a bumpy road to a spooky place, a place where national teams, for so long the focus and pinnacle of attention, no longer call all the shots, where the highest levels of the game are merely the hors d'oeuvres, net practice for those whose appetites extend to all-you-can-eat feasts in Mumbai and Kolkata.

Nonetheless, amid all this frantic and often confusing relocation of the goalposts, Bravo and company were still willing to take a pay cut if it meant benefiting those labouring on the lower half of their greasy, treacherous pole. How many of us, in our own jobs, would do likewise? Granted, exceedingly few of us earn anything like as much as Bravo or Gayle (or even Jason Holder), but how many bankers or surgeons are queuing up to take a pay cut to help clerks or nurses? Generosity is generosity. For that, surely, these rebels warrant our admiration rather than opprobrium.

That the WICB appears so eager to paint a diametrically opposed picture testifies to its members' desperation to maintain control at any cost to credibility. Before the forceful Ramnarine resigned in 2012, the board refused point blank to deal with him. Garth Wattley summed up the board's approach to the WIPA as "a mixture of conciliation, intransigence, and more often of late, arrogance".

	That Michael Holding, the owner of the calmest, coolest voice in the menagerie we call the commentary box should feel compelled to raise it to such a pitch should not be dismissed lightly

Once upon a time, at the risk of tooting my own horn, I was party to a similar collective effort to aid less fortunate colleagues. When Robert Maxwell suddenly closed the London Daily News in 1987, after the bouncing Czech had lured scores of journalists from safe jobs to launch the paper just five months earlier, those of us who had been on board from the start voted to take a 50% cut in our severance pay. We decided on this course in order to ensure that the latest appointees, who had left their previous publications but had yet to report for duty at the LDN (of whom there were a fair number), could be compensated. It didn't help them enormously but I like to think they appreciated the gesture. On the other hand, I was single and childless at the time; I'm not at all sure I would have backed such a vote 20 years later.

But let's not get distracted. The bottom line could not be clearer. In the centuries-old struggle between management and players, across all major professional sports, the workers, emboldened by free agency, agents and endorsements, are now asserting their rights as never before - and management doesn't like it one eensy-weensy bit. Particularly not when it breeds season-shortening strikes (witness Major League Baseball in the mid-1990s), let alone season-nullifying strikes (witness the National Hockey League in 2004-05). The abrupt cessation of activities in an ODI series, barely a month after FICA, the international brotherhood, welcomed the signing of a collective bargaining agreement between the WICB and the WIPA, is merely another small landmark on the long, steep, rocky climb to respect.

Nothing proclaims the extent to which the tables have turned over the past half-century than a remarkable statistic from the winter of 2012-13: for the first time since Major League Baseball owners consented to salary and contract arbitration in 1974, not one of the 133 players took his claim as far as a hearing, the upshot of the clubs' increasing willingness to sign younger players to multi-year deals, affording even non-stars a degree of security. Unfortunately West Indies cricket is neither wallowing in record attendances nor benefitting from equitable revenue-sharing.

The funny thing about all this - as in funny-peculiar rather than funny-ha-ha - is that this latest downing of tools should happen in India, where resistance to players' unions, among the players themselves, has been fiercest. For all the vicissitudes of the BCCI, the fact that Sachin, Rahul and Anil never felt much, if any need, to form one says a great deal about their contracts, but must also say something at least faintly complimentary about N Srinivasan and his posse.

By the same token, the reality is unavoidable: without Indian support FICA will remain toothless. Fearless as the WIPA is, the day that MS Dhoni and/or Virat Kohli declare public solidarity with their brothers in charms is the day the WICB, Sri Lanka Cricket and their ilk start pondering the wisdom of their conniving and bullying. Only then will professional cricketers truly feel that the pendulum has swung as far as it needs to swing.

It takes two to tango, but it takes a lot more to stop a rot.

Stop lecturing the Scots. They want freedom, not wealth

Westminster's arrogance has played straight into the SNP's hands: next year's Scottish referendum could deliver the shock of the century

• 
• • Simon Jenkins
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 26 November 2013 20.45 GMT

No nation seeks independence to get rich. It seeks independence to get free. The Scottish leader, Alex Salmond, today published a 670-page account of the political economy of an independent Scotland prior to next year's referendum. Little of it really matters. Some 30 countries have separated from dominant neighbours in the last half-century, and few stopped to count the cost. They left details of flags, borders, taxes and currencies to their negotiators. They simply wanted to govern themselves as they saw fit. That was enough.

That Scotland should come even near the brink of secession after three centuries of union with England is historically astounding. A mere 50 years ago, it was inconceivable. The reason is specific. There seems no limit to the insensitivity of Westminster's political class to the aspirations of the subordinate tribes of the British Isles. Edmund Burke remarked that London ruled even its American colonies more considerately than it did Ireland. In Scotland's case, from the poll tax and delayed devolution to the contempt for Edinburgh of London's "tartan mafia", every move has played into the nationalists' hands.

Supporters of the old British empire assumed it would last for ever. They were wrong. It disappeared because the mood of the age was against it, abetted by inept colonial administrators. Only in the white commonwealth was retreat dusted with some dignity. Meanwhile Britain's earlier empire, that of the English over the so-called Celtic half of the British Isles, has also been crumbling. Most of Ireland is gone. Salmond's white paper is a blueprint for dismantling the rest.

The white paper recycles a familiar agenda, largely included in last year's document on an independent economy. It is a confusing mix of real constitutionalism and a rag-bag of old SNP policies tossed in to give independence voter appeal. The latter tarnishes the former.

The constitution proposals are clearly a negotiating hand. We learn that the Queen can remain monarch, borders can remain open, citizenship can be shared and national debts divided. If the Scots want Faslane's nuclear submarines to go, go they must. Or perhaps Faslane could become Scotland's Guantánamo Bay.

Salmond has more trouble over his twin economic pillars, of European Union membership and the retention of sterling. He and his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, must know that their economic model is heavy on optimism, if not fantasy. It portrays a Scotland surging forward on the cutting edge of capitalist innovation. Tax breaks galore would do for Scotland what they have done, up to a point, for Ireland. Scottish Widows would ride down silicon glen.

The reality is that Britain has long clamped the "golden handcuffs" of welfare dependency on the Scots, subsidising them annually by some £1,000 a head more than the English. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, admittedly on a worst-case base, reckons Scotland will need an 9% rise in income tax to compensate for losing Britain's subvention. Salmond retorts that the Scots would be £600 a head better off.

Whatever the truth of that, Salmond was unwise to distort the vexed debate by promising crude budgetary give-aways, such as childcare grants, tax cuts, social housing subsidies, windfarm hand-outs and the traditional splurge that tends to accompany the first stage of fiscal devolution. Nor does he allow himself the transitional leeway of a separate currency, with scope for depreciation. He wants to stay linked to the pound. He wants to share the national debt, pool financial sovereignty and reach a deal on pension and other inherited liabilities.

This is a recipe for Greek-style disaster. Scotland might enjoy the spurt of investment and growth that tends to greet new states, as in Slovakia or partly autonomous Catalonia. But the most likely sequence is brief euphoria followed by budgetary crisis, retrenchment and austerity. The emergence into the sunnier uplands of small-is-beautiful independence would be slow and painful. Salmond himself would not long survive such turmoil.

With nationalism realised, new forces to left and right would appear. Slashed payrolls and fewer benefits would see disaffection and emigration. Tourists would depart a Highlands landscape blighted by Salmond's turbine industrialisation. Optimism would no longer be an option. The road from Edinburgh to Denmark remains plausible, but it would be long and rocky.

Yet all this is Scotland's business, and is beside the question of how to give political shape to a fast-emerging national identity. Britain should know all about secession. It championed Ulster's separation from Ireland. It went to war to allow Kosovo to secede from Serbia. It sponsored the breakup of Yugoslavia, Iraq and now Afghanistan. The only empire London still supports appears to be its own ragged island confederacy.

If any generalisation is relevant to the Scottish referendum, it is that nation states worldwide are losing sovereignty upwards and downwards. States must pay obeisance to supranational treaties – in Britain's case to the EU – while their domestic control is eroded by ever more assertive sub-national groups. Wise countries such as Spain concede autonomy to the Basques and Catalans in response. There are many models of confederacy from which to choose, from Belgium and Italy to the European Union and the Commonwealth.

England's political tradition rejects such pluralism, and has paid the price. An empire that reached across oceans now struggles to reach across the Irish Sea, Hadrian's Wall and Offa's Dyke. Most of Ireland broke away in 1922, due to Westminster's mishandling. Today the English would be well-advised to stop lecturing the Scots and silence the claque of Scots expatriate scaremongers clearly appalled at becoming foreigners in their adopted land. Humility all round is urgently needed.

Polls suggest that the Scots may not go the whole hog to independence – but they may still deliver London the shock of the century. The truth is that there is no full national independence these days. There are layers of sovereignty, tiers of autonomy, democratic pluralism. Most Scots clearly seek greater detachment within, if not from, the UK.

Modern Edinburgh already feels more like Dublin than London. The coalition must seriously consider offering a new Anglo-Scottish deal, somewhere between independence and the present devolution. Salmond has put on the agenda a new dispensation between London and the "national" capitals of the UK, Northern Irish and Welsh as well as Scottish. Only the arrogance of London's political community finds such a prospect intolerable. That arrogance lost one British empire. It may yet lose another.

George Carlin on Religion and God