The paradox that leads professionals into temptation

 Andrew Hill in The FT

Before her first ward-round as a medical student, Sunita Sah watched as the consultant leading the group stuffed his pockets with branded pens and notepads from a hospital cart piled with drug company freebies. 

Noting her astonishment, he remarked, “these are the only perks of the job”, and continued to stock up. “I couldn’t help but think: ‘What’s the end-effect of this?’” Sah told me. 

She found part of the answer to that question when she moved from medicine into management consulting and started analysing how every interaction between healthcare companies and doctors had an impact on their prescribing habits. 

Now a professor at Cornell University and an honorary fellow at Cambridge’s Judge Business School, Sah has filled in more gaps with a new study that sheds light on the dark side of professionalism and how to avoid it. 

Her findings are stark and surprising. The greater a manager’s sense of professionalism, the more likely he or she is to accept a gift or bribe. Worse, high-minded professionals may be more susceptible to unconscious bias towards gift-givers, precisely because they are convinced they think they know how to ignore their blandishments. 

“I NEVER turn down something for free that I know isn’t going to kill me!” retorted one manager in response to Sah’s survey. “A free lunch from someone? Go for it! If the guy is fool enough to think his free lunch/dinner/use of cabin, etc, is going to influence me, he doesn’t know me at all! People don’t influence me beyond what I, and I alone, allow!” 

In the study for the Academy of Management Perspectives, Sah equates this “professionalism paradox” to the Dunning-Kruger effect, according to which poor performers lack even the ability to recognise their own hopelessness. 

Sah’s study is based on surveys of managers, but some of the pernicious real-world effects of her paradox are clear. In the extreme case of the opioid epidemic, books such as Empire of Pain and Dopesick (now also a television series) have chronicled the way respected physicians were dragged into the overprescription of painkillers after receiving free gifts and conference invitations from manufacturer Purdue Pharma. 

Yet their ability to self-regulate against conflicts of interest is still many professionals’ first line of defence when watchdogs and legislators start threatening to curb their autonomy with new rules. 

One problem is that we are all professionals now. The term used to be almost the exclusive domain of lawyers, doctors, teachers, accountants, and others who had laboriously acquired specialist knowledge, shown integrity, and deserved an elevated status. Now the same status is loosely claimed by everyone from salespeople to, yes, journalists. The currency has been debased. 

In law, behaving professionally and ethically is “part of your training, it’s part of your identity, it’s what makes you tick — which isn’t necessarily true elsewhere”, David Morley, former senior partner at Allen & Overy, says. But the head of a professional services firm adds that professionalism “can’t be an excuse or a cover story” for a lack of underlying principles. 

These senior leaders are describing the difference between what Sah calls “deep” and “shallow” professionalism. 

Deep professionals should recognise the risk of undue influence and avoid exposing themselves to it in the first place. Her parallel is Odysseus plugging his ears with wax to avoid falling for the sirens’ song, or, more prosaically, managers who decline all gifts, rather than relying on a corporate threshold to protect them. It is “easier for individuals to rationalise and morally disengage the acceptance of [small] gifts”, Sah writes, or even to stop noticing them altogether. 

Deep professionals should embrace continued ethical training, to help embed principles, and embrace an understanding that they may be prone to bribes and influence-seeking. They should also continue to practise their values, just as a concert pianist goes on rehearsing scales. 

Professionalism “isn’t an individual characteristic, or a feeling”, says Sah. Instead, she would like to redefine it as “repeated behavioural practices that demonstrate a deep understanding of the concept”, backed by appropriate rules and codes. In that form, anyone can aspire to deep professionalism. 

“The law as a profession doesn’t give you some status or standing: you have to earn that,” the senior partner of another law firm told me. “We shy away from [the attitude] ‘It’s OK, we’re professionals’.” In fact, professionals who catch themselves saying or thinking anything similar should be on their guard. They may be in the ethical shallows and about to run aground.  

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?

The age of deference to doctors and elites is over. Good riddance

Mary Dejevsky in The Independent

There was something about the story of five-year-old Ashya King that went beyond the plight of this one small, sick child, wrapped up in his blanket and connected to a drip. It was not just the public relations savvy of his family: the elaborate preparations for their flight, recorded and posted on the internet that drew such all-consuming public interest. Nor was it only the drama of the police chase across Europe, and the nights spent in a Spanish prison. It was much more.

There was a profound clash of principles here at a junction of extremes: a child with a terminal brain tumour, a fixed medical consensus, and parents who hoped, believed, there could be another way.

You probably remember – I certainly do – how forcefully Ashya’s father, Brett, argued his case. He had, he said, set about learning all he could about treatment possibilities for his son’s condition on the internet and in medical journals and concluded that a particular form of therapy was superior to the one being offered by the NHS.

Now, 18 months on, Ashya King’s story has a sequel beyond the so-far happy ending of his recovery announced last March. The sequel is that the treatment his family fought for so hard has indeed been found to be superior to that generally offered by the NHS, and in precisely the ways that the Kings had argued. A study published in The Lancet Oncology – an offshoot of The Lancet – concluded that the proton beam therapy, such as Ashya eventually obtained in Prague, was as effective as conventional radiotherapy, but less likely to cause damage to hearing, brain function and vital organs, especially in children. 

In one way, that should perhaps come as no surprise, given King’s claim to have scoured the literature. There is also room for caution. This was a relatively small study conducted in the US. There was no control group – with children, this is deemed (rightly) to be unethical – and harmful side-effects were reduced, not eliminated. But such is the nature of medical research, and the treatment decisions based on it. Things are rarely cut and dried; it is more a balance of probability.

This may be one reason why the Lancet findings had less resonance than might have been expected, given the original hue and cry about Ashya’s case. But my cynical bet is that if the study had shown there was essentially no difference between the two treatments, or that proton beams were a quack therapy potentially hyped for commercial advantage, sections of the NHS establishment would have been out there day and night, warning parents who might be tempted to follow the Kings’ path how wrong-headed they were, and stressing how the doctors had been vindicated.

Instead, there were low-key interviews with select specialists, who noted that three NHS centres providing the therapy would be open by April 2018. Until then, those (few) children assessed as suitable for proton beam treatment would continue to go to the United States at public expense. (Why the US, rather than Prague or elsewhere in Europe, is not explained.)

It may just be my imagination, but I sensed an attempt to avoid reigniting the passions that had flared over Ashya’s treatment at the time, and especially not to raise other parents’ expectations. But I don’t think the controversy should be allowed to rest so easily. The King family’s experience raised serious questions about the practice of medicine in the UK and the attitudes of the professionals to their patients. And these latest research findings on proton therapy mean that it still does.

When Brett King presented his arguments, he did so not just with understandable emotion, but with enviable lucidity. He patently understood what he was talking about. This treatment was there; he wanted to give it a go, and he was prepared to raise the funds to pay for it. To the medics, he may well have come across as difficult, and there were those who genuinely felt that he was acting against the best interests of his son. In that case, the arguments should have gone to court – as they had done with eight-year-old Neon Roberts and his contested cancer treatment half a year before. That the Kings are Jehovah’s Witnesses may also have cued particular caution.

However, what many, especially in the medical establishment, seem reluctant to recognise is that change is afoot in relations between the professional elite and the rest – and not only because the so-called “age of deference” is dead.

Increasingly, it seems, we lay people are invited to make choices, only to be censured, or worse, for making the “wrong” one. Lawyers, for instance, will repeatedly tell you that they offer only advice; it is up to us to act on it, or not. So it is, increasingly, in the NHS. 

In theory, you can choose your GP, your hospital, your consultant – and, within reason, your treatment. In practice, it is more complicated. You may live too far away, the professionals may try to protect their patch, and the actual consultant is not there.

In the crucial matter of information, however, things have been evening up. The internet-nerd who turns up at the GP surgery convinced he is mortally ill may be a time-consuming nuisance, but such self-interested diligence can also help to point a time-strapped GP in the right direction. Not all are hypochondriacs. Patients may have more time and motive to research new treatments than their doctor. We old-fashioned scribes may have misgivings about the rise of citizen-journalism. But not all challenges to professional expertise are ignorant – or wrong.

In the case of Ashya King, everyone behaved questionably, even as they genuinely believed they were acting in the child’s very best interests.

But the days when the professionals – for all their years of training – had the field to themselves are gone. In medicine, we lay people are getting used to that. Are they?

Lessons from a bank robbery

Courtesy Rishi Singh

During a recent robbery, the bank robber shouted: "Don't move. The money is insured and ultimately belongs to the government, and Your life belongs to you."

Everyone in the bank laid down quietly.

This is called "Mind Changing Concept” or Paradigm Shift Changing the conventional way of thinking.

When a lady lay on the table provocatively, the robber shouted at her: "Please be civilised! This is a robbery and not a rape!"

This is called "Being Professional” Focus only on what you are trained to do!

When the bank robbers returned home, the younger robber (MBA trained) told the older robber (who has only completed Year 6 in primary school): "Big brother, let's count how much we got."

The older robber rebutted and said: "You are very stupid. There is so much money it will take us a long time to count. Tonight, the TV news will tell us how much we robbed from the bank!"

This is called "Experience” Often, experience is more important than paper qualifications!

After the robbers had left, the bank manager told the bank supervisor to call the police quickly. But the clever supervisor said to him: "Wait! Let us take out $10 million from the bank for ourselves and add it to the $70 million that we have previously embezzled from the bank”.

This is called "Swim with the tide” with experience and dishonesty. Converting an unfavorable situation to your advantage with resourcefulness and cunning!

The supervisor says: "It will be good if there is a robbery every other month."

This is called "Changing priority”. Personal Happiness is as or more important than your job”.

The next day, the TV news reported that $100 million was taken from the bank. The robbers counted and counted and counted, but they could only account for $20 million.

The robbers were very angry and complained: "We risked our lives and only took $20 million. The bank manager took $80 million with a snap of his fingers. It looks like it is better to be educated and in a position of power than to be a thief!"

This is called "Knowledge is worth as much as gold"! And one can reap riches with deftness, crookedness and dishonest inclination with guts"

On Walking - Advice for a Fifteen Year Old

  

By Girish Menon

Only the other day at the Bedford cricket festival, Om, our fifteen year old cricket playing son, asked me for advice on what he should do if he nicked the ball and the umpire failed to detect it. Apparently, another player whose father had told him to walk had failed to do so and was afraid of the consequences if his father became aware of this code violation. At the time I told Om that it was his decision and I did not have any clear position in this matter. Hence this piece aims to provide Om with the various nuances involved in this matter. Unfortunately it may not act as a commandment, 'Thou shall always walk', but it may enable him to appreciate the diverse viewpoints on this matter.

In some quarters, particularly English, the act of playing cricket, like doing ethical business, has connotations with a moral code of behaviour. Every time a batsman, the most recent being Broad, fails to walk the moralists create a crescendo of condemnation and ridicule. In my opinion this morality is as fake as Niall Ferguson's claims on 'benevolent and enlightened imperialism'. Historically, the game of cricket has been played by scoundrels and saints alike and cheating at cricket has been rife since the time of the first batting superstar W G Grace.

-----------
Also Read

Cricket and DRS - The Best is not the Enemy of the Good

Sreesanth - Another modern day Valmiki?

-----------

Another theory suggests that the moral code for cricket was invented after World War II by English amateurs to differentiate them from the professionals who played the game for a living. This period also featured different dressing rooms for amateurs and professionals, there may also have been a third dressing room for coloured players. One could therefore surmise that 'walking' was a code of behaviour for white upper class amateurs who played the game for pleasure and did not have to bother about their livelihood.

This then raises the question should a professional cricketer walk?

Honore de Balzac once wrote, 'Behind every great fortune there is a crime'. Though I am not familiar of the context in which Balzac penned these words, I assume that he may have referred to the great wealth accumulated by the businessmen of his times. As a student and a teacher of economics I am of the conviction that at some stage in their evolution even the most ethical of businesses and governments may have done things that was not considered 'cricket'. The British during the empire building period was not ethical nor have been the Ambanis or Richard Branson.

So if I am the professional batsman, with no other tradable skill in a market economy with no welfare protection, travelling in a last chance saloon provided by a whimsical selection committee what would I do? I would definitely not walk, I'd think it was a divine intervention and try to play a career saving knock.

As you will see I am a sceptic whenever any government or business claims that it is always ethical just as much as the claims of walking by a Gilchrist or a Cowdrey.

I am more sympathetic to the Australian position that it is the umpire's job to decide if a batsman is out. Since dissent against umpiring decisions is not tolerated and there is no DRS at the lower echelons of cricket it does not make sense to walk at all. As for the old chestnut, 'It evens out in the end',  trotted out by wizened greats of the game I'd like to counter with an ancient Roman story about drowned worshippers narrated by NN Taleb in his book The Black Swan.

One Diagoras, a non believer in the gods, was shown painted tablets bearing the portraits of some worshippers who prayed, then survived a subsequent ship wreck. The implication was that praying protects you from drowning. Diagoras asked, 'Where were the pictures of those who prayed, then drowned?"

In a similar vein I wish to ask, 'Where are the batters who walked and found themselves out of the team?' The problem with the quote, 'It evens out in the end' is that it is used only by batters who survived. The views of those batters with good skills but who were not blessed with good fortune is ignored by this 'half-truth'.

So, Om, to help you make up your mind I think Kipling's IF says it best:

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

Then, you may WALK, my son! WALK!

There is another advantage, if you can create in the public eye an 'image' of an honest and upright cricketer. Unlike ordinary mortals, you will find it easier, in your post cricket life, to garner support as a politician or as an entrepreneur. The gullible public, who make decisions based on media created images, will cling to your past image as an honest cricketer and will back you with their votes and money. Then what you do with it is really up to you. Just watch Imran Khan and his crusade for religion and morality!

The writer plays for CamKerala CC in the Cambs league.

A degree in life, not just cricket

The MCC university cricket system provides a chance to prepare for life after the game while pursuing a county contract

George Dobell

June 22, 2012

If the last few days have taught us anything, it is that there is far more to life than cricket. So while the outcome of the final of the British Universities and Colleges Cricket (BUCS) competition might not, in itself, seem particularly important in the grand scheme of things, such encounters actually carry much deeper significance. Indeed, you could make a strong case to suggest that the introduction of MCC University cricket (MCCU) is, alongside Chance to Shine, central contracts, four-day cricket and the adoption of promotion and relegation, one of the most positive developments in domestic cricket in the last 20 years.

Professional sport is a seductive beast. It sucks you in with whispered promises of glory and glamour and spits you out with broken dreams and an aching body. For every cricketing career that ends in a raised bat and warm ovation, there are a thousand that end on a physio's treatment table or in an uncomfortable meeting in a director of cricket's office. Many, many more stall well before that level.

And that's where the trouble starts. Young men trained for little other than sport can suddenly find themselves in a world for which they have little training and little preparation. Without status, salary or support, the world can seem an inhospitable place. It is relevant, surely, that the suicide rate of former cricketers is three times the national average.

The Professional Cricketers' Association does sterling work trying to help former players who have fallen on hard times, but prevention must be better than the cure, and a huge step on the road of progress has been taken in the form of the MCCU.

It has had different names along the way but the MCCU scheme was set up in the mid-1990s by former England opening batsman Graeme Fowler. Confronted with a choice between university and full-time cricket when he was 18, Fowler opted for university. It was a decision that provided the foundations for financial stability that extended far beyond his playing days. As Fowler puts it while watching the Durham MCCU team he coaches play Cambridge MCCU in the BUCS final: "Even a cricketer as successful as Alec Stewart had more of his working life to come after he finished playing. And not everyone can be a coach or a commentator."

The fundamental aim of the MCCUs is to allow talented young cricketers to continue their education while also pursuing their dream of playing professional cricket. It is to prevent a situation where they have to choose between the two. It should mean that young players gain the qualifications and skills for a life beyond cricket while still giving themselves every opportunity to progress in the game. Graduates will have enjoyed good-quality facilities and coaching while also maturing as people. It should be no surprise that several counties actively encourage their young players into the scheme as they know they will return, three years later and still in their early 20s, far better prepared for the rigours of professional sport and life beyond it.

It works, too. Just under 25% of England-qualified cricketers currently playing in the county game graduated through the system. Durham MCCU alone has helped develop more than 50 county players, six county captains, three England players and, most obviously, England's Test captain, Andrew Strauss, who credits the initiative as vital to his success. "It was at Durham University that I went through the transition of being a recreational cricketer to one who had the ambition to play the game for a living," he has said. The MCCUs have a mightily impressive record.

And, these days, it costs the ECB nothing. Not a penny. Instead the six MCCUs (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Cardiff, Leeds/Bradford and Loughborough) have, since 2005, been funded by the MCC. Each institution receives £80,000 a year and hopes to cobble together enough extra funding from sponsorship and other smaller grants to meet their annual running costs of around £130,000. You might well ask why the ECB - despite its annual income of around £110 million and rising - cannot find some more money for such an admirable scheme.

Indeed, it is interesting to reflect on the roots of the MCCUs. In the mid-1990s, the ECB (or the TCCB as it was known at the time) lost its Lottery funding as the Lottery Commission was concerned that the sport did not possess a complete development programme that incorporated higher education. The board, in panic, embraced Fowler's plans and appointed a couple of dozen regional development officers. Had the Lottery Commission not intervened, it is debatable whether the ECB would have had the foresight to act at all.

	Fowler never actually wanted the games to carry first-class status but worries that if such status is stripped the funding may disappear too. He also worries that the matches against the counties - key factors in the development of his young players - might go

There are detractors. When, in April, Durham MCCU were bowled out for 18 by a Durham attack that contained Graham Onions, among others, it provided fresh ammunition for those who say that such games should not hold first-class status.

It is a fair point. Fowler never actually wanted the games to carry first-class status but worries that if such status is stripped, the funding may disappear too. He also worries that the matches against the counties - key factors in the development of his young players - might go. Without those two facets, the system loses its attraction and the safety net disappears. The odd aberration in the first-class record might well prove to be a price worth paying for the benefits of MCCUs.

As it was, Cambridge MCCU, boosted by an innings of 129 by Ben Ackland, defeated Durham MCCU by 24 runs in the BUCS final in the scenic surrounds of Wormsley. Perhaps only four or five of the players on show have realistic hopes of enjoying a career in cricket - Surrey's Zafar Ansari is currently with Cambridge MCCU, though he missed the BUCS game, while Paul Best (Cambridge MCCU and Warwickshire), Chris Jones (Durham MCCU and Somerset) and Freddie van den Bergh (Durham MCCU and Surrey) are among those already affiliated with counties - but it was noticeable that at least one first-class county sent a scout to the match.

"I spent my whole professional playing career on a one- or two-year contract," Chris Scott, the Cambridge MCCU coach, says. "It probably made me a more insecure, selfish cricketer than I should have been. The MCCU scheme provides a safety net for players and helps them grow up and improve as players as people. It helps prepare them for life, whether that is in cricket or not."

"And it's not just about playing," Fowler adds. "Some of our graduates have gone to be coaches or analysts at counties. Some might have become solicitors, but set up junior coaching schemes at their local clubs. There is a cascade effect that people sometimes don't appreciate."

The quality of the head coaches is a vital factor. Scott, for example, is a philosophical fellow well suited to preparing his charges for the inevitable slings and arrows. He has needed to be. As Durham wicketkeeper he was, after all, responsible for the most expensive dropped catch in first-class history. Playing at Edgbaston in 1994, he put down Brian Lara on 18 and moaned to the slip cordon, "I bet he goes on and gets a hundred now." Lara went on to score an unbeaten 501.

Cambridge are the standout side among current MCCUs, and Scott's record in aiding the development of the likes of Chris Wright and Tony Palladino should not be underestimated.

The graduates of Durham MCCU are also lucky to have Fowler. Not just for his playing experience - anyone who scored a Test double-century in India and a Test century against the West Indies of 1984 knows a thing or two about batting - but also his life experience. For his easygoing good humour and mellow wisdom. He enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a player, but the formation of the MCCUs is surely his biggest contribution to the game.

George Dobell is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo

My Weltanschhaung - 14/02/2012

Being Valentine's Day, I am reminded of the guy who spoke at IIT-Kharagpur's humour festival - "Yeh Valentine day kya hai? Yeh to ek soone ka hiran hai jo dhanush banane wale companiyon ne bazaar me chhod rakha hai.! Translation, 'This Valentine's Day business is a golden deer released in to the market by firms selling bows'.

I am shocked at the competence of the managers of Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines who have not paid their staff salaries for two months. These are supposedly market savvy, professional and efficient firms.
What shocks me the most is the statement by Sanjay Aggarwal CEO of Kingfisher,  "We got hit by a couple of large unanticipated payments which had to be addressed on an emergency basis." 
How can you be unaware of such large payments coming up? Is there no penalty for not paying salaries on time? I think both these firms tactics aim to scupper any relief and rescue of Air-India, stating that they all need relief from the government.

I am surprised that the Israeli Prime Minister knew who attacked his staff in New Delhi even before the local police. The Israelis and its allies have been assasinating Iranian nuclear scientists without the same publicity though. The bomb blast in Delhi may be aimed at preventing India from signing up a bilateral treaty with Iran. Will the Indian government buckle under the pressure?