Howard stabbed as India takes control of cricket
Columnist By Spiro Zavos, 1 Jul 2010 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert
- Tagged:
- afro-asian bloc, Cricket, ICC, John Howard
107 Have your say
Former Prime Minister John Howard presents the trophy to his team captain Cameron White. AAP Image/Alan Porritt
The ICC has become a puppet for the Indian politicians and money men, some of them deeply corrupt, with the unprecedented opposition from the Afro-Asian bloc to the nomination of John Howard as its vice-president.
The vice-president serves two years in this office before taking over as president.
The objection of the Afro-Asian bloc was stated to be based around an objection to former politicians coming into the world of cricket politics, without having done previous work on their local and national committees.
Howard was otherwise engaged for over 30 years with a political career that saw him become a long-serving Prime Minister of Australia. Throughout that time he maintained a more than keen interest in the game and its controversies.
He spoke out again Murali’s controversial bowling action and even more strongly against the corruption of cricket and political life in Zimbabwe.
The fear of the Afro-Asia bloc is that Howard would try to impose some decent governance into the game by challenging the bunch of political thugs – there are no other words for them – who are currently running things right now.
The Roar was opposed to Howard’s nomination by the Australian and New Zealand cricket authorities on the grounds that it was New Zealand’s turn to provide the candidate. The New Zealand nominee, Sir John Anderson, a banker with a long history of cricket administration behind him, should have been accepted by Cricket Australia. But it was also accepted that Howard was a strong candidate who deserved to be accepted once his nomination was put forward.
Presumably, Sir John will be re-nominated, although I was told in New Zealand some months ago that he has a bad back and is reluctant to do much travelling.
He faces the prospect, too, of the black ball because of his courageous efforts in the past to rein in the disgraceful financial rorting of Zimbabwe cricket by the Mugabe-backed thugs running the game there.
Two years, Malcolm Speed, an Australian who was the chief executive of the ICC, set up an audit committee investigation into the financial dealings of Zimbabwe cricket. Sir John Anderson was on this committee. The audit was never released. Speed was sacked and Sir John resigned from the committee.
No one can be in much doubt that until the last 40 years or so that cricket was a white game. Read the analysis of the West Indian Marxist C.L.R. James and this truth becomes very obvious.
The game was run from London. England and Australian dominated the councils of the game. Even the playing colours used in Test cricket reflected this dominance.
The Packer revolt changed all this, even to the colouring of the clothes used by players. Power in the game flowed to where the money was, which was in television. This is still true but with the difference that instead of the money being in Australia, it now resides in India.
Indian television money, with the rotten addition from the gambling syndicates, now totally dominates the game.
New Zealand cricketers, to take an example, are now paid more than their rugby counterparts because of the money provided by ICC contracts which in turn are stoked up from the Indian game.
The advent of the commercialisation of Twenty20 cricket, taken to a height or commercial depth that even Kerry Packer could not even dream of achieving, has further entrenched the control of the game world wide by the Indian powerbrokers.
Where will this all end?
We have seen the pollution of the Olympic ideals with the politicisation of the IOC. FIFA is another example of how a commercially lucrative sport, in this case football, can be corrupted when third world politicians and wide boys move in and grab control.
Now cricket is plunging rapidly down the same vortex.
Jack Clarke, the outspoken chairman of Cricket Australia, is in no doubt that the insult to Australasian cricket and to John Howard, is going to take world cricket into dangerous waters: ‘I think it’s part of India’s power grab for world cricket. It’s important for them that the ICC does not have a powerful chairman and in my view the ICC will be diminished and based in Mumbai within two years.’
Hopefully, Sir John Anderson can be prevailed upon to be Australasia’s new candidate for the vice-presidency of the ICC.
Even if this happens it will be a struggle to bring some decent governance back into the game. These are trying times for world cricket as the black and white divide in the game is increasingly becoming a chasm.
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- Explore:
- afro-asian bloc, Cricket, ICC, John Howard
July 1st 2010 @ 10:21am
lucyfanclub said | July 1st 2010 @ 10:21am | Report comment
I think this is the new world order in cricket. 20/20 and $$$$ in Asia. In ten years it will be unrecognisable and as bent as boxing
July 1st 2010 @ 11:45am
Redb said | July 1st 2010 @ 11:45am | Report comment
I thought it was funny how after discovering that 6 out of the 10 delegates have told the Aust/NZ nomineee that he has no chance, Howard says bugger it, Mugabe was a dog then and is now and I’m still running.
July 1st 2010 @ 11:57am
JF said | July 1st 2010 @ 11:57am | Report comment
Howard lost the Liberal Party leadership to Andrew Peacock while in opposition, he also endured headlines like “Why does this man even bother” while being decimated by Bob Hawke in the polls. He then went on to lead the coalition to government and run the nation for 11 years, he is not one for giving up easily.
July 1st 2010 @ 12:04pm
Redb said | July 1st 2010 @ 12:04pm | Report comment
I agree. It was funny becuase it was the same stubborn style he used in Australian politics.
July 1st 2010 @ 12:53pm
apaway said | July 1st 2010 @ 12:53pm | Report comment
“Good governance” and John Howard should never be used in the same sentence. This is the man that lied his way to a cheap political victory in 2001, demonised asylum seekers, let boats sink instead of having them rescued and thereby processed, repeatedly refused to issue an apology to Indigenous Australians and took Australia back to the dark ages in terms of global respect by pursuing a myopic Calvinist worldview rooted firmly in the 1950s. Did he expect that other nations didn’t notice? Is it ANY wonder the six nations that rejected his candidacy did so? This man was a stain on our political history and no matter how corrupt Spiro might think cricket is and who is causing it, he would become a stain on cricket’s history as well. He’d have been as appropriate a candidate as, oh, I don’t know, Geroge W Bush?
July 1st 2010 @ 1:26pm
Viscount Crouchback said | July 1st 2010 @ 1:26pm | Report comment
What depressing responses to a sensible article. Obtuseness and self-loathing masquerade as sophistication and objectivity. This simply isn’t about Howard. It’s about whether New Zealand and Australia are permitted to exercise their rights in the international game or not. I suspect that many of the posters above would have been the type of people to defend the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War on the basis that the West wasn’t perfect either.
It also surprises me that so many people seem to think they know more about the inner workings of the ICC than Malcolm Speed, the Chief Executive for seven years. He is adamant that the rejection has nothing to do with Howard’s politics and everything to do with his desire to shake the organisation up and stop corruption. But the likes of apaway and Art Sapphire obviously have a private line to the BCCI.
July 1st 2010 @ 1:31pm
Art Sapphire said | July 1st 2010 @ 1:31pm | Report comment
I also have a private line to FIFA, the KGB and Kim Jong Il
July 1st 2010 @ 2:07pm
Brett McKay said | July 1st 2010 @ 2:07pm | Report comment
Indeed Viscount, this has been my whole argument today.
Speed’s take on Howard’s rejection, from the SMH today: http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/howard-was-rejected-because-he-would-foil-the-iccs-saboteurs-20100630-zmti.html
July 1st 2010 @ 2:45pm
apaway said | July 1st 2010 @ 2:45pm | Report comment
No, I just have an understanding on how loathed Howard is by countries close to the ones he persecuted while in power. Which means it IS about Howard because that’s the man the other cricket nations saw, not someone who might have the economic and management skills to fix whatever it is that needed fixing.
July 1st 2010 @ 10:38pm
Tom said | July 1st 2010 @ 10:38pm | Report comment
Yes, but the point is that Australia and NZ (and also arguably South Africa and England) have long tolerated less than savoury characters from Zimbabwe and the sub – continent being given positions in the ICC. I am no fan of Howard’s, but the process of his appointment was all above board. Given their past performances, there is no genuine reason for the Sub Continental bloc and Zimbabwe to veto his appointment.
July 1st 2010 @ 5:18pm
Hansie said | July 1st 2010 @ 5:18pm | Report comment
This is one article by Spiro with which I wholeheartedly agree. The simple fact that no explanation has been given for rejecting the nomination speaks volumes. If this really was a rejection of John Howard because of his attitude towards boat people, or opposition to Zimbabwe, or the many other theories advanced in these threads, then why won’t the 6 opposing boards say so publicly. The failure to even hear from the candidate is also a damning indictment of the ICC.
July 1st 2010 @ 1:29pm
Brett McKay said | July 1st 2010 @ 1:29pm | Report comment
A few points on the two Aus/NZ candidates:
(pasted from another thread)
egardless of what we think of the man, John Howard might have brought with him sound economic beliefs and values to the ICC, which in turn might have made the ICC a bigger economic power in world sport that it already is. He might even have brought an ability or avenue to further the game in America too. But he might also have brought in a unprecedented level of accountability, and this is what the delegates are scared of. Howard might have asked the hard questions. Clearly, the ICC wanted no bar of that.
Sir John Anderson was also part of the ICC Audit committee which examined the running of Zimbabwean Cricket, a commitee which highlighted “unexplained irregularities” to the ICC. The ICC refused to make the findings public, and sent CEO Malcolm Speed to “tend his begonias” (as Vinay so delicately put it) as a result of his stance on the matter. Sir John Anderson also resigned his position in protest.
If these same 7 countries reject Sir John Anderson (who is no guarantee to accept being nominated anyway) as a candidate, will people THEN believe that the ICC refuse to see what is obvious to so many??
July 1st 2010 @ 1:40pm
MarkR said | July 1st 2010 @ 1:40pm | Report comment
Brett – so if Anderson is proposed & accepeted what is the conclusion ?
Also, based on your extracts above I’m still struggling to see why CA fought tooth & nail for Howard over Anderson.
July 1st 2010 @ 2:03pm
Brett McKay said | July 1st 2010 @ 2:03pm | Report comment
Mark, we’ve got a bit of thread tennis going on here, so I’ll try and address both your points here..
If Anderson is accepted, I think the obvious conclusion would be (if it wasn’t already obvious) that the ICC is officially a rabble. Given that Howard and Anderson have pretty similar thoughts on ZC and the Mugabe regime in general, it would be tough to conclude that the reason is anything other than Howard’s political background. But then that hasn’t stopped several former and current subcontinental candidates being involved in the ICC previously.
On your second point, I can only agree with you. I was at the time, and remain now, uncomfortable with the way CA bulldozed NZC into accepting Howard as a candidate. However, I will say that I can see what CA was trying to bring to the ICC via Howard (fresh, non-cricketing perspective on tough matters) and I applaud their initiative in trying to bring about much-needed change..
July 1st 2010 @ 2:32pm
Rabbitz said | July 1st 2010 @ 2:32pm | Report comment
Brett,
While I hear and understand the position of “the ICC must change”, exchanging one regime of selfishness, corruption and racism for a new regime of selfishness, corruption and racism is hardly worhwhile change.
Further on a couple of points above – Howards economic abilities are hardly outstanding, as treasurer he presided over our highest interest rates in recent history, and was lucky to have a resources boom in his later years as PM to prop up his budgets.
I doubt Howard would have any influence or ability to take cricket to the US, several non-political colleagues of mine in the US believe him to be “a craven Bush lick spitle” which leads me to think that the US may have a similar view as expressed by Australia in the 07 federal election.
July 1st 2010 @ 3:02pm
Brett McKay said | July 1st 2010 @ 3:02pm | Report comment
Rabbitz, short of bringing in the Pope (and even he might be a bad example), I’m not sure how the ICC can possibly change without going against India and bringing in “an outsider to meddle in ICC affairs…”
July 1st 2010 @ 3:11pm
Viscount Crouchback said | July 1st 2010 @ 3:11pm | Report comment
Sorry, but this is just political partisanship gone mad. I really think you over-estimate the degree to which the world knows or cares about John Howard’s political record. I suspect that 95% of Americans have never heard of him.
Your first paragraph is apposite – you just direct it at the wrong people. For what we seem to have here is a classic case of colonial victims wishing to become post-colonial bullies. If there is a case to be made against the supposed “elitism and condescending attitude” – to quote Malcolm Conn – of England and Australia up to the 1990s, then surely the solution now is to uphold a liberal, pluralist system in which every country has rights and is able to exercise those rights.
Instead, the Indians – or rather, some of the Indians: there are plenty of decent Indian cricket folk – seem instead to wish to exact some bizarre form of “revenge” for being condescended to all those years. In fact, their bullying and selfishness is shaping up to be ten times worse than anything MCC ever did, motivated (as it was) by an old-fashioned if patronising desire to prosletyise the gentlemanly aspects of the game to all corners of the Empire.
If Malcolm Conn is correct that “resentment of colonialism hangs thickly in the air at ICC meetings” then the game has a problem. The world has moved on and the Indians would do well to remember it.
July 1st 2010 @ 3:29pm
Art Sapphire said | July 1st 2010 @ 3:29pm | Report comment
Its not the 95% of Americans who have not heard of Howard that matterViscount.
The last time I checked they didn’t play cricket in that former colony.
However, our cricket playing friend certainly now who Howard is.
Chicago was favourite to win the Olympics for 2016.
Rio ended up getting them. Why?? Because George W. used up all that goodwill and the Yanks were taught a belated lesson in manners.
July 1st 2010 @ 6:05pm
apaway said | July 1st 2010 @ 6:05pm | Report comment
95% of Americans have never heard of any political leader outside their own country.
July 1st 2010 @ 1:31pm
keeper13 said | July 1st 2010 @ 1:31pm | Report comment
Seems much of australian mainstream society and clueless jingoistic tabloid media still live a utopian bubble and view the world in purely:
‘us’ = superior, good white, ‘decent’ , ‘real footy playing’ , exceptional, special etc
( along with our similar well attributed cousins ..US, England, NZ, etc )
and ‘them’ = non-anglos and other foreigners, inferior , soccer following with dodgy habits and ‘un-austrlalain values’
despite the blatant dog-whistling on a daily basis obvious to anyone who wishes to see..
anyone who dares to say this is ofcourse howled down by the tabloid posse as ‘ hater of our great country and should p*ss off…”
we are a great country….but insight, quiet reflection and self-criticsm ain’t one of its strong points..
Anyway back to the topic..
Johnny you reap what you sow .. woof woof
July 1st 2010 @ 2:48pm
apaway said | July 1st 2010 @ 2:48pm | Report comment
Well said, keeper. Always trust keepers…
July 1st 2010 @ 6:19pm
Beast-A-Tron said | July 1st 2010 @ 6:19pm | Report comment
Ah “dog-whistling” – the criticism one makes when you don’t actually have any proof of your allegations.
Handy Tip: When using this word, don’t objectively analyse what a person says, it’s all about the ‘vibe’.
July 1st 2010 @ 2:26pm
Art Sapphire said | July 1st 2010 @ 2:26pm | Report comment
Thanks for everyone’s contributions, I now have all the facts at hand and can make the following conclusion.
NZC nomination, Anderson, was at the head of the queue.
Cricket Australia then decide to behave like illegal boat smugglers and get Howard to jump the queue.
The rest of the cricket world sees this act of queue jumping and decide to enforce their own Pacific solution.
Its not right, is it, Mr Howard??
July 1st 2010 @ 2:31pm
MarkR said | July 1st 2010 @ 2:31pm | Report comment
Art – please tell me this whole scenario is not just one huge boatload of irony where the loser is the average sports punter.
BTW – whenever anyone brings up the demise of the modern olympics they lose me. It means they have fallen for the spin the OIC used to provide.
July 1st 2010 @ 2:55pm
Art Sapphire said | July 1st 2010 @ 2:55pm | Report comment
MarkR- its a boatload of schadenfraude.
The loser is not the average sports punter. The loser is Howard and Cricket Australia.
If you want to set a good example to the world then you have to should behave accordingly.
Unfortunately, I can’t send them to Nauru so they can have a good think about things.
July 1st 2010 @ 2:30pm
preciouspress said | July 1st 2010 @ 2:30pm | Report comment
Spiro, you may not like to be reminded, that Roebuck has been right all along.
He strongly criticised the original nomination and had Anderson been the choice then it is unlikely we would have had this debacle.
Having accepted that Howard was the Australasian nominee. Roebuck now unreservedly condemns the saboteurs and the process which has denied Howard’s vice presidential confirmation.
July 1st 2010 @ 2:37pm
Roger said | July 1st 2010 @ 2:37pm | Report comment
I don’t understand the Logic here — Being in a democratic country – If seven countries are opposing the Candidate then it means he is just not FIT for the post.
Had the Circumstance been Howard got the support of seven countries but still India managed to scuttle his Post, then probably whatever crap that the author has written (influential, money power…) here might be True.. But thats not the case !!
July 1st 2010 @ 10:44pm
Tom said | July 1st 2010 @ 10:44pm | Report comment
Well no, the protocol of the ICC is that the appointment of leaders is rotated around the member countries. This time, it was Australia/NZ’s time to appoint a nominee, and that was John Howard. Australia and NZ tolerated some rather odd appointments from the subcontinent (according to Malcolm Speed one appointee didn’t even know the name of his national team’s captain) in the understanding that they would be afforded the same courtesy. Regardless of your opinion of Howard, the process was above board, and there is no precedent or valid reason for the ICC to reject his nomination.
July 1st 2010 @ 2:53pm
Photon said | July 1st 2010 @ 2:53pm | Report comment
You cannot seperate Howard the politician from Howard the cricket administrator . I think everyone knows that Howard would not be seen as fit and proper to lead the cricket world by england australia and new zealand if he hadn’t been aussie prime minister forever. In light of the above it is correct that those of us who are opposed used his behaviour towards asians and africans while prime minister to decide to vote against him. This isn’t about Zim, this man is a racist and to expect us to support him is akin to asking us Afro-Asian countries to support a man who is obviously a white supremist. Nobody has even bothered to deny Howard is racist, all they say is regardless of that, there is no such thing as regardless when it comes to racism, there is no excuse for it, no amount of competence (if in fact he was, seeing as good governance and discrimination don’t exactly go hand in hand) make racism acceptable. Craven, Howard. Spiro you disappoint me!
July 1st 2010 @ 4:03pm
Beast-A-Tron said | July 1st 2010 @ 4:03pm | Report comment
“this man is a racist and to expect us…support a man who is obviously a white supremist.”
Proof?
Wow, it is quite amazing how much lying people will do in order to discredit a political outlook they are threatened by/disagree with.
July 1st 2010 @ 4:25pm
Photon said | July 1st 2010 @ 4:25pm | Report comment
Beast a Tron. Fact Howard was opposed to the banning of Apartheid South Africa’s side being banned. Fact Howard felt Australia should preserve it’s demographic make up. I don’t know what makes you think he was not a racist
July 1st 2010 @ 4:37pm
Beast-A-Tron said | July 1st 2010 @ 4:37pm | Report comment
“Fact Howard was opposed to the banning of Apartheid South Africa’s side being banned.”
Don’t know if that is true, but it doesn’t indicate racism. Maybe he felt sport and politics ought not to get mixed, or maybe he felt there was a better solution?
“Howard felt Australia should preserve it’s demographic make up”
Which is currently very multi-cultural and multi-racial, so what is wrong with that?
“I don’t know what makes you think he was not a racist”
The fact that he has never attributed innate qualities to any particular race.
July 1st 2010 @ 10:46pm
Tom said | July 1st 2010 @ 10:46pm | Report comment
Do you have any evidence for these statements, Photon? An oft – forgotten fact is that Howard presided over record levels of immigration.
July 1st 2010 @ 10:47pm
dasilva said | July 1st 2010 @ 10:47pm | Report comment
On August 1, 1988 Howard, as opposition leader, threw a Molotov cocktail into the political desert. Talking about Asian immigration he said: “If it is in the eyes of some in the community too great, it would be in our immediate term interests and supportive of social cohesion if it were slowed down a little so that the capacity of the community to absorb were greater.”
The Hawke government proposed a motion to the parliament opposing the use of race to select immigrants. Howard fought desperately against the motion, but could not contain divisions in his own party. Ian Macphee, Steele Hall and Philip Ruddock crossed the floor to support the motion.
“I don’t think it is wrong, racist, immoral or anything, for a country to say ‘we will decide what the cultural identity and the cultural destiny of this country will be and nobody else’.”
___________
Mr Malcolm Fraser claims Mr Howard approached him in a corridor following a cabinet meeting in May 1977 and said: “We don’t want too many of these people. We’re doing this just for show, aren’t we?”
_________
I don’t want to say he is racist. Nevertheless he didn’t want vietnamese migration and he voted against the bill to remove race as a criteria for migration. I sort of view him as a nationalist who celebrate traditional Australian culture and he believed that migration of people from different cultures will change Australian culture to something else and hence Australia lost some of its unique national identity.
Later on Howard recanted some of his comments directed at Vietnamese Migration and then say Asian migration is no longer an issue. Considering the great amount of international students from Asia that came along to Australia during his era, maybe he did change his stance. Nevertheless he doesn’t have a squeaky clean past in terms of race.
July 2nd 2010 @ 1:04pm
Beast-A-Tron said | July 2nd 2010 @ 1:04pm | Report comment
“Considering the great amount of international students from Asia that came along to Australia during his era, maybe he did change his stance.”
Getting into power moderated his views on immigration, so it would seem. Considering Chinese immigration in the 19th century during the gold rush, maybe he decided that Asian immigration was in fact apart of Australian national identity.
I agree with your overall analysis, Howard wasn’t a racist, he was an old-fashioned nationalist. Both are primitive forms of collectivism which I reject but it’s important to get your labels correct..
Critics and haters of Howard by all means attack him for being highly nationalist, but at least get your terms correct; so sick of seeing ‘racist’ thrown around without any decent explanation.