In 2003 when his namesake, Malcolm Gray, retired as President of the ICC, one expected that Speed too would fade away into the sunset thus ending an acrimonious and bitter term as ICC CEO.  Instead he not only managed to stay on, but has been clinging to his position, despite fiasco after fiasco. 

The most glaring fiasco was the World Cup of 2007.  It was the worst organized, and most controversy plagued event in the history of cricket.  Not only did the tournament go on for far too long, it also saw the death of  Pakistan’s coach, Bob Woolmer in suspicious circumstances.  The investigation into his unfortunate demise was delayed and botched, and one has a feeling it was at the behest of the ICC, who didn’t want its precious tournament compromised.  Sadly that is precisely what happened. 

The farce of a final that saw ICC’s so called Elite panel of officials not know the basic rules of the game, forcing the Sri Lankans to bat in near pitch dark conditions, was simply the icing on a rotten cake.  Yet none of the officials in charge was sacked.  The Match Referee Jeff Crowe, the Umpires, Steve Bucknor, Aleem Dar and Rudi Koertzen were temporarily dropped from officiating, but none was fired.  Malcolm Speed didn’t even offer to take any blame, and simply mouthed a few apologetic words.

This disaster was preceded by the farce at the Oval where an ICC Official, without any proof of wrongdoing, based merely on his own personal bias, accused a team of ball tampering, and when the team naturally reacted to this slur on its integrity by refusing to play, immediately forfeiting the match to the opposition, without making an attempt to resolve the impasse.  The Official in question then was seen blackmailing the ICC and the ICC was forced to keep him on their payroll, despite not being able to have him officiate in any major ICC events.

Such cock ups in any other sport would have led to heads of the officials in charge rolling long ago.  But only in cricket, which despite its façade of modernity, suffers from hidebound colonial era officials and their antiquated thinking, are such things tolerated by the stake holders.

It is clear that the Indian subcontinent, with India in particular, but also including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, is the epicenter of World Cricket, at least financially speaking.  Yet, the administrators in charge of the game in the Subcontinent are unable to convert that financial clout into any meaningful influence in the ICC.  This begs the question: Who runs the ICC the members or their employees, i.e. the CEO and his staff?   The ICC is comprised of the member boards, with India being one of them, and a very important one too, due to the size of its cricket marketplace.  But India like Japan at the United Nations, pays a lot of bills, but wields hardly any power in the ICC.  The old guard of England and Australia despite providing much less funding still wield immense power.  How do they manage it?

Just look at the officials hired by the ICC.  Almost all are white men.  Yes the President may be non-white, i.e. Jagmohan Dalmiaya, Ehsan Mani, Percy Sonn, Ray Mali, or soon to be Sharad Pawar, but mostly they are merely rubber stamps.  The Chief Executive, who nominally works under the President, and at the behest of the ICC’s member boards, is the one who actually seems to be calling the shots.  The Executive level team is almost entirely comprised of white men.  There may be the token non-white, such as Urvasi Naidoo, the ICC’s chief legal counsel, but the overwhelming administrative structure is white and Anglo-centric. 

The argument is made that this is because these are the best administrators available.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As we see in real life, companies from all parts of the world with executives from every nation, compete successfully in the global market.  A Ratan Tata, Narayan Murthy or Lakshmi Mittal are no less competent than their White counterparts. 

Even in the realm of cricket, Subhash Chandra of Zee Television, is providing a sterling example of how cricket can and should be run.  He has hired ex-cricketers to run the show.  ICL has Kapil Dev, Tony Grieg, Dean Jones, and Kiran More as the Executive committee and has cricketers running the show at all levels.  They have shown a wonderful, caring attitude towards the players and the game, which after all is the reason that the administrative officials get to enjoy the perks of power that they do.

It is high time that the Majority of the ICC’s members whose cricket teams have often been at the receiving end of biased and heavy-handed officiating by ICC officials demand that the officials themselves be accountable or replace them forthwith, starting with the man at the top, the incompetent and arrogant (a deadly combination) Malcolm Speed.   That is the only way that the cause and not the symptoms, the latest of which was the farce of a match in Sydney, can be addressed once and for all.  Simply getting an umpire changed, or an unjust ban overturned may seem like a victory in the short term, but will not change anything fundamentally. 

It may not be such a bad idea for Mr. Pawar, who will soon be the next ICC President to actually try and kill two birds with one stone.  He can neutralize the ICL by co-opting it and can also reign in the ICC by having someone like Kapil Dev, who is gaining tremendous experience in the actual organizing and running of cricket, or even Tony Grieg, who has been closely involved in the business of Cricket, since the late 1970s become the new ICC CEO. Someone like Sunil Gavaskar, who has worked within the ICC structure and understands it well, may also be a good candidate.  In any case it is time to enforce a Speed limit on the ICC immediately.

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon