It is perhaps revealing that England was the only ICC member country to accept Australia and New Zealand's nomination of the controversial ex-Aussie PM John Howard as ICC president.
The remaining 7 members rejected him as dismissively as the Aussie electorate in Australia's last election.
Although Australia and New Zealand feign bewilderment at the ICC decision, what is really bewildering is their provocative nomination of a deeply flawed man.
Howard is not known for his background in cricket, of which he has none. Not as an administrator, certainly not as a player.
His forays into cricket are limited to his refusal to join the near-universal boycotting of the apartheid South African regime from the sport; his condemnation of Sri Lankan great Muthiah Muralitharan as a "chucker"; and his constant extralegal attempts to bar Zimbabwe from cricket during his time as Australian PM.
He is better known politically - for his support of Pauline Hanson, his treatment of asylum seekers, his revisionist history on the children overboard incident, his assault on Aboriginal land rights, his handling of the Cronulla riots under his watch (the last seems especially ominous in the light of the trauma Indian residents are now facing in Australia). And the attitude these incidents portray is hardly comforting. The subtle racial positions Howard adopted throughout his political career are widely recognized, and cricket was having none of it.
Cricket, already riven by continuous head-butting between the Australia/England/New Zealand bloc and the rest of the cricket world, did not need another version of Malcolm Speed running it (likely a far worse version of him.) Speed aggravated relations in cricket manifold, especially during the time he was joined by fellow-Aussie Malcolm Gray.
No thanks, Australia.
Go find someone more qualified -- we don't need your rejected PM candidate. Send him back into the wilderness and send us someone who is known to be a uniter rather than a divider.
Oh, and a bit of a background in cricket, other than attacking the greatest ever Test bowler as a chucker, would be nice.
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Quote:Australian_Pride
I would not expect anything else from the criminals and trash from Africa and the sub continent that are ruining cricket. [www.smh.com.au]
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Quote:Well you are the one who descended from the criminal ancestry......Australian_Pride
I would not expect anything else from the criminals and trash from Africa and the sub continent that are ruining cricket. [www.smh.com.au]
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