World Cup Cricket: Time to overhaul the ICC

The curtains have come down on the World Cup Cricket competition with the Australians as the champions. They thumped the New Zealanders by 7 wickets with 16.5 overs to spare. Tthat was a huge victory and ended the competition that had seen intense competition among the participating teams on a note of anti-climax. In six weeks of cricket fest, there were many performances by individuals and team-wise that will make this World Cup linger in the memories of cricket lovers for a long time.
One of the lasting memories would be the performance of the so-called minnows that gave the so-called giants, the run for their money. It was a matter of great pride for Bangladesh that its team led the alleged minnows and stamped its ability on the world stage to be reckoned as capable of beating the best. It beat England that had hatched a macabre plan with India and Australia last year through their control of the International Cricket Council to condemn Bangladesh with the alleged minnows into the low tier of a two-tier system. ICC's controversial Chairman Naranyanswami Srinivashan had championed the unsuccessful macabre plan that wanted to divide international cricket into "Brahmins" and "scheduled castes" with Bangladesh and the alleged minnows in the group of the "scheduled castes"!
Therefore it gave great pleasure to cricket lovers in Bangladesh to watch the Bangladesh cricket team defeat the English team and make it look like minnows and "scheduled castes". Bangladesh's victory knocked the England team outof the competition. And to make the defeat absolutely humiliating, the England team will have to qualify with the other minnows, the Afghans, the UAE, Scots and Irish to participate in the 2019 World Cup! Bangladesh also had the other self-proclaimed "Brahmin" or "blue blood", the Indians, in a similar predicament in the quarterfinal match. Going to the match, the Indians were as short of confidence as the English. It needed some atrocious decisions from the umpires that exposed deep malaise in the ICC, to get past Bangladesh.
The other alleged minnows, Zimbabwe, Ireland and Scotland also showed their worth. They underlined emphatically that they had the potentials of beating the best, including the so-called "Brahmins". Led by Bangladesh, the once alleged minnows established through World Cup 2015 that there are no "blue bloods" or "Brahmins" in international cricket, not in the 50-50 version at least, and that the sooner those who have control of the ICC, the regulator of international cricket, realise this, the better it will be for the game that hundreds of millions around the globe love, millions who have watched the World Cup 2015 with more love and intensity than football fans watch their World Cup competitions.
The most important by-product of World Cup 2015 has been the fact that it has brought to the surface the questionable role of the ICC and its Chairman. And again, it has been Bangladesh that has underlined this malaise though one must disagree with the way it did it. The Bangladesh Minister for Planning, Mustafa Kamal,who is also the ICC President, was justified in taking to task the umpires but then he lost the plot. He pointed fingers at India that he later explained were remarks made on an individual capacity. He should not have forgotten he was wearing two very important hats to let his personal emotions supersede his professional judgment.
Nevertheless, all of the above exposed ICC's bias for India palpably and the role of its Chairman who now virtually controls the ICC. First, it allowed the Indian Team a full 2-month-long tour of Australia ahead of the World cup allowing the team to gain experience in Australian conditions that helped its performance a great deal.  Second, the Indian Chairman used ICC's anger on its President to publicly violate the ICC constitution that states that the President would present the ICC Cup or the World Cup to the winning team. He handed the Cup to the winners. Third, there have been loud complaints about the DRS in this year's World Cup. And when DRS reviews were shown live in this year's competition, the TV Umpires were heard asking for better views of TV footages from technicians with well-known Indian names. Finally, the disproportionate presence of Indian cricket commentators in TV coverage of World Cup 2015 was also something that left a bad taste in the mouth.
The ease with which Naranyanswami Srinivashan was able to literally push the ICC President out to hand the Cup to the winning team underlines India's and his own control over the ICC. The ICC President's line in calling the ICC the Indian Cricket Council sounded odd as he was criticising the body of which he is the President and after the Bangladesh team had lost the game and he crossed the line when his comments impinged upon India's good name. But Mustafa Kamal underlined views about the ICC that are there very strongly present under the surface including the unconstitutional way in which Srinivashan replaced the ICC President from handing the Cup. The President was not even allowed to be anywhere near the important closing ceremony of World Cup 2015, mafia style!
In a panel interview in London in February just before the World Cup 2015 started, former Sri Lankan cricket captain and now a Sri Lanka Minister Arjuna Ranatunga in company of Arivanda de Silva and Muttiah Murlitharan blasted the ICC and called it "the International Crimes Council" under the control of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Arjuna Ranatunga called the Presidents of all the country cricket organisations who are members of the ICC as "puppets" and the ICC itself as a "toothless tiger", captive in the hands of the Indian Board.
Arjuna Ranatunga in particular stated in the interview about Naranyanswami Srinivashan's son-in-law who was caught match fixing. He also mentioned that Srinivashan stepped down as BCCI President following an order of the Indian Supreme Court to facilitate investigations into betting scam. Yet the ICC elected him as its Chairman under a new constitution that made the President a figurehead and gave all powers to the Chairman. The plan that India, England and Australia had made last year of a two-tier system was Naranyanswami Srinivashan's brainchild that he floated as the BCCI chairman at the ICC meeting in February last year. The two-tier evil plan was based on the argument raised by him that "a strong India with a vibrant commercial structure is good for world cricket." Only, he did not explain that the plan that he had floated at that ICC meeting intended help the BCCI raise its revenue from international cricket from US$ 63 million to US$ 765 million.
This year's World Cup has exposed themachinations of Naranyanswami Srinivasan and the problems with the ICC without suggesting remedies. But the Chairman that even the Indian Supreme Court thinks is "nauseating" and cannot touch cannot be good for international cricket. Such is his influence over Indian cricket that he has been able to successfully strike a deal with the new BCCI President Jagmohan Dalmiya to retain his position as ICC's Chairman. He used his overriding influence in Indian cricket politics to get Jagmohan Dalmiya elected over Sarhad Pawar who had said that he would end Srinivashan's tenure because he considered him undesirable for cricket and India's good name in international cricket.
Meanwhile, Naranyanswami Srinivasan is using India's ability to spin money through the IPL to overawe cricket administrators, players and umpires worldwide to adopt the policy of hear no evil and see no evil to sustain his and India's unacceptable stranglehold on international cricket.Nevertheless, Bangladesh has exposed to the cricket world that ICC is in deep problem and its leadership is in "nauseating" hands. It should now take leadership to demand that the ICC should be investigated by an independent commission and overhauled having established that it is now a power in international cricket to reckon with.
The writer is a former Ambassador.
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