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Before I launch into this, I have to acknowledge that the Cricket Australia and ICC people have an onerous job to do.
The CA Board are entrusted with the running of the Australian game, and they in turn have employees who carry out their instructions. And they have business partners.
It is an iconic sporting business with a monopoly, predicated upon the merger of the Packer empire’s sporting enterprises and the old Australian Cricket Board.
As such, it is very dollar conscious. It is also very protective of cricket in all its forms in Australia and the young men and women who play. Some might say secretive.
Where the boundaries run between organisations such as the ICC, Nine Network, PBL, Ten Network, Fairfax, Sky, BBC, ABC, Cricket Australia, the eight state and territory bodies and a dozen other organisations is information which seems to be kept at arm’s length from the public.
Unless, of course, you know where to look.
I have no brook with James Packer, Gina Rinehart, Nine Entertainment or anyone from the CA offices, but I do wonder about where cricket – both around the world and here in Australia – is going.
And I think it is the duty of CA and the ICC to explain that direction immediately.
Australia’s sporting media seems unable to explain the recent ICC proposal which sees Australia, England and India in some ‘breakaway’ bracket of cricketing nations, which it is said will be an enormous money spinner for those nations.
I don’t get a sense of where cricket as a sport is headed, and I get a sense that the ICC has no power to actually advance cricket.
I get a sense that CA and the ECB have got with the powerbrokers, being India (in the form of the BCCI and IPL), and made covert arrangements to play Tests, T20 and 50-over matches.
I get a sense that South Africa and all other member nations and associates will have an inferior program of matches.
And I get a sense that the spread of T20 leagues in each country is not being entertained at all, which is peculiar in light of the game’s magnificent success at IPL and Big Bash levels.
The only announcement on CA’s website relevant to the ICC is about a bilateral women’s program.
The only media release that I can see on the ICC’s website is a very broad statement which serves to acquiesce to anything CA, ECB and BCCI want, while at the same time saying that “meritocracy” shall precede all.
So all nations can play all forms of cricket, but not with the ‘big three’ unless they are very lucky?
And the BCCI, presumably because it will part with almost all of the ICC’s annual budgetary requirements to run its operations and grant funds to Member and Associate nations to grow, has “central leadership responsibility”.
In other words, Indian cricket will run the ICC.
There is a vow that Test cricket will have ‘primacy’, but no mention of where T20 and 50-over cricket is going. The Champions Trophy will replace the proposed World Test Championship.
Now the BCCI, CA and ECB had been working on a paper with the ICC which was leaked to Member and Associate nations and it has hit the fan.
But it has all gone in-house apparently, and some newspapers and media groups are keeping mum.
What the ICC and CA and BCCI and ECB might want to do quickly is clarify where cricket, especially T20 league cricket, is headed.
A tour itinerary for each country would be a nice start.
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