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For most of us, cricket admin is ‘Who’s going to order the
balls?’
Who’s organising friendlies? The scorebook’s nearly full.
Someone needs to go to this AGM. Shall we play in a midweek league? Gotta have
orange balls for that, right? Who’s getting those? We need new letters for the
scoreboard. Who’s gonna sit on this committee? What about organising a rota of
people to help with the pitch…
In normal life, I am neither organised nor an organiser, but
in a cricket context I (mostly) don’t mind. Especially this time of year, when
balls being delivered is part of the build up of excitement to cricket actually
happening again.
To me, this is what cricket admin means.
In professional cricket though, administration means
something quite different.
We are in a period of extraordinary slapstick in
international cricket administration. Not since the golden years of Laurel and
Hardy has this kind of high-sheen polish been meticulously applied to every
detail of an operation, giving the impression of comical ineptitude so
convincing, that you’d be forgiven for thinking that they really are as utterly
clueless as they’ve contrived to look.
ICC president Mustafa Kamal resigned last Wednesday in what
can only reasonably be described as a huff, ostensibly because ICC chairman N.
Srinivasan presented the World Cup to Australia, not him, as was his
constitutional right as president.
Kamal, fresh from a wincingly inappropriate attack on his
organisation’s own umpires following a disputed World Cup decision, resigned
saying “I can’t work with those who act unconstitutionally and unlawfully.”
Apparently without irony, he went on: “These type of people should be away from
cricket, otherwise cricket will be spoilt.”
The ICC then brilliantly issued a press release stating that
“Mr Kamal said that he was stepping down on personal grounds and offered his
apologies to all associated with the ICC, while adding that he had no
complaints to make against anyone.”
In Kamal’s defence, (and boy does he need one,) Srinivasan
is a comedy villain to put Boss Hogg to shame. He’s implicated in so many scams
and corruption scandals that it’s very difficult to keep up. As BCCI president,
he conducted an investigation into match fixing at Chennai Super Kings, the IPL
franchise owned by India Cements, which he owns, and run by his son-in-law, who
was the one arrested. This blatant conflict of interest prompted the Supreme
Court of India to order his resignation from the BCCI, pronouncing it
“nauseating” that he was still in office.
It was more or less at this point, with (I think, though as
I say it’s hard to keep up) only three major corruption cases pending against
him, that England and Australia thought it best to elect him chairman of the
ICC.
Meanwhile, with all this going on, who has ordered this
season’s balls? Or have they been ordered, but just not turned up yet because
they’re on back-order? These are the perennially burning cricket admin
questions.
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