Cricket needs reform, but players’ body doesn’t inspire confidence

Everybody has a plan to make cricket more equitable, bring in more money, have more rational calendars, comprehensible points systems and so on. The International Cricket Council, sadly, isn’t one with such plans. Some years ago, the Woolf Report put forward ideas which were heartily ignored. Now the World Cricketers’ Association (WCA), a body with little power since India doesn’t recognise it, has published a report it claims can bring in an additional $240 million annually.

This players’ body (originally called FICA or Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations) has identified four areas that require urgent solution in a recent paper entitled Protecting History, Embracing Change: A Unified Coherent Global Future.

These range from scheduling (which it says is “chaotic, inconsistent and confusing”) to finance (“not optimised, balanced or used effectively”) and from regulations (outdated for a “transnational era with limited security for players”) to leadership, or lack of it (there is “regional self-interest, short-term thinking and an imbalance of power”).

Ironic

If the rationalisation is aimed at making more money, it is ironic because that’s what the WCA is accusing the Board of Control for Cricket in India of focusing on all the time. Should success be calculated in purely monetary terms?

Many of the recommendations have been around for a while. It would have been possible to take the rest more seriously if the essence went beyond complaining about the IPL’s lack of love for the rest of the world. The IPL stimulates half the global economy in cricket, avers the report, “but shares only 0.3 percent of the revenue with other countries, and less than ten percent with the players.”

There is too the recommendation that India and Pakistan play more often “to create significantly further global interest and drive new growth.” In other words, please make even more money, India, and share it with the rest of us.

Another recommendation is that India’s men players ought to be released “to play in global T20 leagues outside the IPL” to increase the leagues’ earning potential. In other words, please help us make more moolah. Money is the root of all good, suggests the WCA.

The International Cricket Council and the BCCI (anyone who can spot the difference is entitled to a prize) have been cavalier about financial accountability. Hence the WCA recommendation: “All distributions from the ICC to National Governing Bodies to be publicly accounted for and independently audited against clear KPI (Key Performance Indicators) and enforcement mechanisms (i.e. future reductions / clawback penalties for any malpractice).” The fact that this obvious practice is a recommendation indicates it is neither obvious nor a practice.

Indians in other T20 leagues

Perhaps an unstated intention in the report is the hope that Indian players (men) would make a case for playing in other domestic T20 franchises for the greater financial benefit of both the individual and the game. Can they sue for restraint of trade, for example? The Indian Contracts Act 1872 which governs contracts might gain currency if that were to happen.

The WCA seems to suggest that nothing can be done about the power of the BCCI and the IPL unless there is a response from within. This is an insidious way of ensuring the growth and spread of the game. As regular readers of this column know, I am not always a great fan of the way the BCCI goes about its job, but isolating India or cutting the BCCI down to size is hardly the way forward for cricket. The WCA report is unlikely to make the slightest difference to either, however.

Reforming ICC?

Is the ICC in need of reform? Yes, it is. The term of its sole independent director (Indira Nooyi) ended in August last, its CEO (Geoff Allardyce) quit in January. Neither has been replaced. Three countries, India, England and Australia together take away 87% of the revenues. There is a “lack of overarching leadership”, as the WCA puts it. Administrators, unlike players, see no merit in those in form helping those struggling. Players complain there’s too much cricket, a lot of it meaningless, but play on nevertheless.

Somewhere between India’s hyper-nationalistic responses to issues and the WCA’s largely single-pointed one there is a solution. Its root lies in altruism, not self-interest.