It’s like the python that started to devour its own tail. The ICC is now grovelling under the Indian cash hegemony and is gradually sliding into a powerless and almost dead body that is run by a set of non-cricketer businessmen, who indulge in the game just for their personal entertainment and prestige.
This week, the popular cricket website Cricinfo said it all in just one paragraph in its introduction to a narration on the travails of the Decision Review System’s (DRS) short journey. It said, “In the space of three months, with the England-India series serving as the catalyst, the ICC's executive board comprising its ten full member nations has gone back on the mandatory application of the Decision Review System in Tests and ODIs, and made it subject to bilateral agreements between the participating boards.”
But Mr. Board Member could you pause for a minute. It was the Cricket Committee of the ICC, which is the nucleus of the game’s brain, which recommended the system and wanted it to be the great leveller of the game.
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| The Sri Lanka Cricket Interim Committee Chairman Upali Dharmadasa while attending the ICC Exco meeting |
The ICC Cricket Committee knows what the game needs and how the game should progress. For instance, former national skipper Kumar Sangakkara is a member of the ICC’s Cricket Committee. While still being an active cricketer he is respected for his knowledge of the game.
Then we have businessman Upali Dharmadasa who by virtue of his post as the Head of the Interim Committee of Sri Lanka Cricket is a member of the ICC Ex-co. Though his knowledge of the game cannot be compared to that of Sangakkara, he sits above him and nullifies a cricketing move that was mooted by him (Sangakkara). That goes to every member in the ICC Ex-co when they are hauled up against its Cricket Committee. The Ex-co plays the game with other agendas.
There is talk about who foots the bill for the DRS. Why not pass the buck on to the broadcasters while the ICC has complete control over the deployment of it. Because even with the delay of the decision making the broadcasters make a buck or two by showing those unpalatable commercials.
Then the next question comes on disparity. We all are aware that India is against DRS. At present Sri Lanka is away in the desert states taking on Pakistan in a series of matches where DRS is being used. New Zealand is in Zimbabwe, in all probability without DRS. Australia is playing South Africa with DRS. West Indies is playing Bangladesh without DRS and above all India is taking on England without DRS.
Mind you, England the other day hammered cricket’s so called World Champions, India, out of sight in a series that had DRS. Then on Friday without DRS India romped home to a crushing win against the same opponents at home.
Imagine Mahela Jayawardena, who is 87 runs short of his 10,000th ODI mark, or Indian legend Sachin Tendulkar, who is just one century away from that all important hundred hundreds in international cricket, facing the situations described below.
Mahela is hit in front early in his innings. The umpire says no, but the review says yes and the doyen misses his 10,000th ODI run. Across in India, Tendulkar early in his innings is hit in front and whoever the other umpire is uses the same view as Jayawardene’s umpire and negates the appeal while it would have had the same end result and the aging Indian legend becomes the cover story for the next few weeks in India.
Then the next question is why is India against the DRS? If every other major cricketing nation is willing to accept it as a modern norm of the game, why is it that only one country stands out like a sore thumb? In spite of the ICC’s neutral Umpire System, do they have a say over this respected panel?
For instance the IPL has become a necessary evil to all cricketers. Now Pakistan Cricket is not in good terms with the Indian board and there is no Pakistani cricketer represented in the IPL. Likewise the umpires are hired for the IPL individually and are not fed through the ICC system because it is a privately organised commercial event of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. However, it makes use of the members of the ICC Elite Panel along with their own. So, can it be by any possible peep hole that the umpires also have to play ball like their Ex-co members to get the nod onto the IPL band wagon. Get onto it and any individual will benefit financially.
The argument is even an individual player keeps looking to the IPL for his salvation rather than his own national commitments. For instance, the highest paid Lankan cricketer will get US$ 127,000 for representing his country in all three forms of the game for twelve months. However, at the IPL auction he is sold for US $ 700,000 just to play one form of the game. It is a season that lasts only a month in April plus the Champions League tournament if the team qualifies.
Then there is something wrong in Sangakkara’s recent statement to the effect that the “IPL is the year-end Bonus.” Plainly the year-end bonus is more than thrice the amount that the home board pays for them to stay in the game. Can the same apply to the umpires as they too get a stipend from the ICC?
Maybe through purpose or ignorance the DRS was born too soon. Remember while the England-India series had the full complement of equipment in England, the Sri Lanka-Australia series, equally important in determining the current top standings in world cricket, lacked some of the important decision-making gadgets. Yet, away in Zimbabwe at the same time the series between Pakistan and Zimbabwe was free of the DRS though it was compulsory. But the fact is that the ICC does not have enough equipment to sustain the DRS system universally.
Taking that into consideration what the Ex-co of the ICC should have done was to help the system produce enough DRS programmes that could go through the World Calendar. It should have derived a way to sustain it at every top-level cricketing exchange and then made it compulsory after the initial Tests. If it had been done so, no Indian or any other interested party could have scuttled the programme. |
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