Drinks Break - The Cricket Blog

At the risk of sounding unpatriotic, I must confess that I was delighted to read that Sharad Pawar’s power games have hit a roadblock, with the West Indies and South African boards refusing to back his candidature for the post of ICC president. Given that the Asian bloc (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh) is forever at loggerheads with the England-Australia-New Zealand combine on election (and most other) matters, the West Indies, South Africa and Zimbabwe votes are typically decisive. And although Zimbabwe has extended support to Pawar, the other two votes appear to be headed the way of David Morgan, Pawar’s rival candidate from the England Cricket Board.

What prompted the West Indies Cricket Board and Cricket South Africa to take on the BCCI is not clear as yet, but by all accounts, theirs is a brave decision. Incurring the wrath of the world’s wealthiest cricket board could easily spell financial ruin for the offender. And the WICB and CSA would have been aware that the BCCI, accustomed to muscling its way to victory on the international stage, is not going to take too kindly to this betrayal. Much like American sanctions against disobedient countries, the BCCI would be exploring all the punitive techniques available at its disposal.

But revenge will not be on Pawar’s mind for some time. For now, he would be more involved with lobbying to win support from associate members of the ICC – his last shot at upstaging Morgan. If he fails, another David would have felled a mighty Goliath. But it’s not the romanticism of an underdog’s victory that we should celebrate.
 
We should instead celebrate that an inept cricket administrator has been kept out of world cricket’s most responsible office. A man, who swept to the helm of the BCCI on the back of an exciting manifesto, has failed to deliver on his promises – now it’s only fair that his ambitions of presiding over the ICC are spiked.

This may appear to be an unduly harsh assessment of Pawar’s performance. After all, we’ve been endlessly informed about the multiple multi-million dollar deals that have been struck during his tenure, swelling the BCCI’s coffers to unprecedented levels. It is undeniable that the rich board has got much richer. Unfortunately for Indian cricket, that is all it has achieved.

Ugly witch-hunts against political opponents have taken priority over the promised professionalization of the administration. Confidential reports and emails now leak almost as a matter of regulation, and the board chief doesn’t see anything improper in “putting in a word” for certain players to the selectors. Pay checks of domestic cricketers have not increased in accordance with what was pledged, and stadia and infrastructure in the country largely remain in the despicable state that they were in before. The selection committee chief says there is “no new talent” in India, but pumping funds aggressively into talent development is a thought that hasn’t crossed Pawar’s mind.

To be fair, Jagmohan Dalmiya, the ICC’s only other Indian president, could have been accused of all these shortcomings and more. But at the time, his marketing acumen was lifesaving for a cash-starved ICC. The ICC now finds itself in a comfortable financial position, so the only skill Pawar has on his cricketing CV is unlikely to be of significant use to them – especially as it will be available only when he is not discharging his responsibilities as Union Agriculture Minister, chief of the Nationalist Congress Party and sugar industry baron in Maharashtra.

With umpiring controversies, racial slurs, ball tampering allegations and now even match-fixing dogging the game, the ICC is in need of dynamic, able and transparent leadership. A barrel of empty promises like Sharad Pawar is not the solution.