Player power to the fore in ICC

Prem Panicker

The summit meeting of international cricket captains - the second of its kind - under the aegis of the International Cricket Council, in London, on July 11 could not have been better timed.

On that day, the captains of all nine Test playing nations, and those of the three top qualifiers in the ongoing ICC Trophy tournament for associate members - are expected to meet with the members of the ICC's Cricket Committee.

The first such meeting, which occured on the eve of the 1996 Wills World Cup, was a haphazard, unplanned event - it happened because all the captains were there on the spot, had no agenda and ended up as more of a social exercise than anything constructive.

This one, however, is different. For one thing, there is an agenda. For another, the nine captains have been invited to sound off about what they see as the ills of modern cricket. And most importantly, the ICC has promised (and with Jagmohan Dalmiya by then installed as its president, it is a promise that is likely to be fulfilled) to not merely listen to the grievances, but actually to do something by way of redressing them.

While the actual agenda is yet to be formalised, it is clear that two burning issues will figure prominently.

One is the huge number of cricket matches being played these days. Wasim Akram, Courtney Walsh and Mark Taylor, the three captains who first called for the summit of cricket captains and who have also mooted the idea of an international union of cricket players, have gone on record that such mindless, frenetic scheduling of cricket matches is destroying the health of players, even as it puts immense personal burdens on them. The three high profile captains have in fact called for laws regulating the number of Tests and one-dayers that teams will play in a season, and also for norms to ensure that the proliferation of one-day triangular series around the world is checked.

The other issue liable to figure prominently is the question of umpires and match referees. The season now ending has been marked by much bad blood over umpiring errors and the perceived biases of match referees, and the meeting of captains is likely to call for stricter quality control when choosing umpires for international fixtures. Another proposal the captains are expected to put forward is that the ICC's umpiring panel gives weight to the report of captains regarding the umpires and the playing conditions, and that umpires who get consistently bad reports be removed from the international panel.

All told, a very good thing this - in an age when sponsors and television magnates have virtually taken over the conduct of the game, this summit could herald the return, to the administration of the game, of some sanity and sense.

Bangladesh gets Test status

Bangladesh, reports say, is reverberating to the sound of celebratory fireworks as it becomes the tenth nation - and the fourth from the Asian sub-continent to be granted full Test status by the ICC.

All rise and put your hands together, and let's hear it for our neighbour!

The elevation to Test ranks, coming as it did simultaneous to Bangladesh's 72 run win over Scotland in the semifinal of the ICC Trophy tournament and its entry into the final, is to be welcomed for one very important reason.

Of late, cricket has become something of an industry. At any given point in the 1996-1997 calendar, we saw at least four of the international sides engaged in cricketing activity somewhere in the world - and March-April 1997 has been particularly frenetic, with South Africa and Australia contesting a one-day series, India and West Indies engaged in a Test series, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka doing the one-day triangular gig in Sharjah, and the ICC associate nations engaged in a tussle to determine the three teams that will join the nine regulars in the 2000 World Cup.

The problem with this overdose of cricket is that spectators are getting increasingly bored by the sight of the same players taking on the same opponents time and again, in tournament after sponsored tournament.

And the solution to spectator's ennui is to spread the game, to involve more countries, to infuse fresh blood into the international circuit - this, in fact, being one of ICC's stated goals for the three remaining years of the millenium.

And granting Test status to Bangladesh is a step in this right direction.

But while joining in the applause, I'm tempted to add a word of caution - merely granting a nation Test status is just not enough. Look, for instance, at Sri Lanka. Years after it has been given the honour, the country's Test calendar is still woefully inadequate. International sides treat Sri Lanka as a brief stopover rather than a full-fledged destination on the cricketing circuit, condescending to play an odd Test and a few one-dayers but not visiting the country for full tours, or hosting the Lankans on their own turf.

England - home, ironically, to the ICC - is the main culprit in this regard. In the last five, six years, England has played just one Test against Sri Lanka. Contrast this with the number of Tests it has played against Australia or, even, against teams like New Zealand and Zimbabwe, and the imbalance of cricketing schedules becomes obvious.

The result, for Lanka, has been that its players have had very little opportunities to hone their Test skills against their peers - and this defeats the very purpose of granting the island nation Test status.

Bangladesh, to my mind, stands in similar danger of being, on the books, a Test nation, without however getting the needed opportunity to play against the other members of the elite company. And that is a situation the ICC will need to guard against.

In fact, isn't it about time the ICC put together something on the lines of a central scheduling committee made of members of the boards of all Test-playing nations, the aim being to see that all countries played each other regularly, rather than merely indulge in reciprocal tours with favoured opponents? A central committee could so handle the scheduling as to ensure that each of the nine - now, ten - Test nations plays all others, at home and away, in the span of four or five years - and that will open up the game, and bring back the spectators to the stadia.

Bribery allegations again in Pakistan

What is it about Pakistan cricket anyway? With nerve-wracking regularity, it lets itself in for one of those convulsions that seem, invariably, to do immense harm to its own team and players.

Just recently, it was the Aamir Sohail episode, with the Pak opener getting into a public tiff with Pakistan Cricket Board CEO and former Test star Majid Khan.

And now it is back to that old bogey, bribery. Former Test star and now chief of the national selectors Hasib Ahsan has demanded an enquiry into allegations of match-fixing and betting levelled against former star Basit Ali.

The storm, in fact, was let loose by former Pak cricket manager Intikhab Alam, who in a statement alleged that Basit Ali had during his tenure in the team taken money to throw games.

It is in this context that Ahsan has called for a high-level enquiry - and on the face of it, the demand is fair enough. The last thing anyone needs is a lot of allegations floating around, and the sooner these are proved, one way or the other, the better for all concerned.

What makes me sceptical, though, is that in the past, such allegations have depended not on the truths of the case, but the internal cricket politics of Pakistan. You will recall that earlier, when Salim Malik was targetted by Australian players for bribery charges, Basit was one of the first to resign from the team - hinting, in the process, that there could be some truth to the allegations against Malik, the then captain.

Now the shoe is on the other foot, and it is Basit who is in the dock.

The question I keep wondering about, though, is - what took Intikhab Alam so long to come out with it? Basit, after all, hasn't played for some time now, has he? So what lies behind the timing of this particular allegation at this juncture?

Ahsan too appears to feel that all is not well in the state of Denmark. For, after calling for the enquiry and arguing that it is in the larger national interest that the issue should be taken with due seriousness, the national selector goes on to say: "It is surprising that Intikhab Alam is making the charges after such a long time, I hope that Intikhab will come out with solid proof in support of his allegations." Ahsan then goes on to say that if Intikhab fails to back his words, then the government should take action against him for bringing the game into disrepute.

This last point, in fact, leads me to the next item...

L'affaire Aamir Sohail

Watching Inzamam ul Haq walking out to open the Pakistan innings, in Sharjah, against Zimbabwe in the ongoing triangular tournament served as a reminder of the suspended opener Aamir Sohail.

True, the suspension - for indiscipline - owes to a public dispute with Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Majid Khan. Sohail recently installed some of his relatives in the box reserved for PCB officials, Khan threw them out, and the resultant flare-up and trading of charge and counter-charge led to the suspension.

Fair enough, it is for each management to take what disciplinary action it sees fit.

What concerns me, though, is some of the stuff Sohail spewed in his fury. Item one is an allegation that he was approached by two Indian players who offered him money to fix a game during the 1994 Singer Cup in Sri Lanka.

The allegation has an inherent error, and focusses the spotlight on an increasingly alarming problem. The error, first - in that tournament, India in fact never did play against Pakistan. One game was scheduled between the two sides, but was washed out due to rain - no "fixing" required there.

Besides the error, I pointed out, there is a problem - but before we get to that, a brief reminder that at the height of Sohail's tirade, he teed off on his captain, Wasim Akram, as well. Akram, Sohail said, was heavily into betting, bribery and match-fixing, he was close to a leading bookmaker, his own brother had also joined the bookie trade... and so on, and forth.

What such allegations - unsubstantiated ones, at that - do to the morale of the Pakistan cricket team, at this point arguably the best in the world, can be left to the imagination. When Sohail serves his suspension, he will presumably be picked for the senior team again. How does he expect to be received by a captain who, in a moment of blind fury, he targetted for such allegations? How does the Pakistan team perform to peak capacity, with such simmering resentment between captain and erstwhile deputy?

That, serious as it is, is a problem for the Pakistan cricket authorities to deal with, and does not concern us here. But the larger problem of thoughtless allegations does.

There have been too many of these in the recent past. Allegations of match fixing, of bribery, of betting, of ball tampering - of every deed in the book short of murder, actually. The pity is that on each occasion, much hot air has been vented in the media, much hue and cry has been raised by the public - but not once has the allegation been properly probed, not once has an attempt been made to prove its veracity.

The upshot has been that these misguided missiles have caused immense harm to the image of the game - a cloud, I submit, that cricket can ill afford.

But why? I thought there are still such things as libel laws - so what prevents authorities from probing such allegations to the hilt? If proved, by all means bring the guilty to book. And if disproved, then take action against the instigator, serve out an exemplary sentence. Do this once, just once, and you will find that players both past and present are no longer quite so keen on shooting off their mouth every time they figure that a bit of a mud flung at someone else can serve their own narrow ends.

How to become a fast bowler

And to end this edition of our cricket diary, an item on a lighter note...

Much has been said about how Sunil Gavaskar owes his technical excellence to the fact that he learnt his cricketing ABCs in the bylanes of Bombay. The story goes that since cross-bat shots increased the risk of shattering windows in adjoining flats, Gavaskar of necessity learnt to play with a very straight bat, and keep the ball in the V - something that is de rigeur for opening batsmen.

The just concluded fourth Test between India and the West Indies may have provided little of competitive interest - but it did provide us with a similar story, this one relating to former pace ace and now the Windies coach, Malcolm Marshall.

Seems that when Macko was in school, he loved to bat. The catch was, though, that over there, the boys have a rather set way of rotating the strike. One player - invariably the kid who owns the cricket bat - gets first strike. LBWs and run outs are not counted as legitimate dismissals - and if a catch is taken, then the player holding the catch gets next turn at bat. So the best - in fact, the only - way for a lad to get a turn with the bat was to bowl, and try and shatter the stumps.

It seems this is what happened to Macko. After waiting in vain, day after day, for a chance to bat, he picked up the ball and gave it a go, deciding to let fly as fast as he possibly could. The result - shattered stumps, and the genesis of one of the greatest fast bowlers of the modern era.

See you tomorrow...