The politics of confrontation

A wind blows from the east Mihir Bose

Almanack home 1997 home

One-day internationals with Sachin Tendulkar draw huge crowds and bring huge money © Getty Images

Napoleon's warning that the world should beware when China awakes has, in the last year, been translated into a wholly unexpected warning for the cricket world from another part of Asia - the Indian subcontinent. It has happened, not on the cricket field, but off it. On the field, the subcontinent has been a major power since 1971, when India won back-to-back series away from home in the West Indies and England. Sri Lanka's recent rise has merely confirmed this trend: three of the last four World Cups have been won by the subcontinent.

However, it is the money that the subcontinent can now generate through cricket that is posing a challenge to the established power centres. It is transforming the traditional image of the subcontinent as the land of magical spinners, wristy batsmen and (in Pakistan) devilish fast bowlers, into a place whose rich cricket administrators can dictate the future of the game.

This sounds like a contradiction. With a combined population of well over a billion, South Asia remains one of the poorest regions of the world. But while much of this population lives just above the poverty line, there is also a well-off nation within the poor one. Six hundred million Indians may not get more than a square meal a day; but India also has 250 million people - almost the population of the United States - with a standard of living not far behind that of the West. Inside the subcontinent's thin man, there is a fat man trying to get out - and desperate to advertise his wealth.

A hint of this had come in 1993 when India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, after the most fractious meeting ever of the International Cricket Council, won the right to stage the 1996 World Cup. The key to victory was the way the three countries got the ICC's Associate Members - hitherto treated much as the Soviet Union used to treat its eastern European satellites - on their side by promising them £100,000 each. England, who believed they had a gentleman's agreement guaranteeing them the 1996 tournament, had offered £60,000 each, and throughout the meeting seemed to assume this was yet another cosy old boys' gathering. The Asians wheeled in politicians and lawyers and treated the event as if it were an American presidential convention. They outflanked England and won a rich prize. How rich only became evident when the 1996 World Cup began.

Unlike the Olympic Games, or soccer's World Cup and European Championships, the cricket World Cup is not an event owned by the international authority that runs the game. The country staging it, in effect, owns the competition. In five previous World Cups this had made little difference: the host country had made money, but not so much as to raise eyebrows. The 1996 World Cup changed everything.

As soon as they had won the competition the hosts set about selling it. Their biggest success was auctioning the television rights for a staggering $US14 million, using a hitherto unknown agent of Indian extraction based in the United States, Mark Mascarenhas. The UK rights alone fetched $7.5 million, compared to $1 million in 1992. In addition the tournament was marketed on a scale never before seen in cricket. There was an official sponsor for every conceivable product, including the official World Cup chewing gum.

A few years earlier, the world's most famous soft drink manufacturers had not even been allowed to sell their products in India. Now Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola battled it out to be the official drink supplier. Coke won - but they had to pay $3.8 million, more than Benson and Hedges paid the Australians to be the main sponsor of the 1992 World Cup. That role went to Wills, the Indian tobacco offshoot of BAT, who paid $12 million.

The organisers loved the rivalry. They were aware that they could keep all the profits, once they had met their expenses, which included a fee of £250,000 to each of the competing Test countries. This amount did not even cover the expenses of some of the teams, but the hosts pocketed a profit of almost $50 million. Contrast this with the 1996 European Championship of soccer in England: where UEFA, as owners of the championships, made a profit of £69 million, England, the hosts, made a loss of £1.7 million.

It could be argued that the cricket administrators of the rest of the world were naïve to agree to such an arrangement. But in five previous World Cups nobody had sought, let alone achieved, such commercial success. Not everyone on the subcontinent foresaw it. The Sri Lankans, co-hosts of the tournament along with India and Pakistan, clearly had doubts: they did not agree to underwrite the costs, so did not participate in any of the profits.

The man who drove the commercial juggernaut was Jagmohan Dalmiya, secretary of the Indian board. He hails from the Marwari community of India whose business skills are both feared and respected

The man who drove the commercial juggernaut was Jagmohan Dalmiya, secretary of the Indian board. He hails from the Marwari community of India whose business skills are both feared and respected. The joke in India is that a Marwari can do business with a Scotsman and a Jew and still make money. The other joke, less flattering, is that if you should see a Marwari and a tiger together in the jungle, you should shoot the Marwari first. Even within the Indian board, there are some who are less than enamoured of Dalmiya. He was responsible for the opening ceremony in Calcutta, which was widely regarded as a disaster. But few have ever had doubts about his financial acumen.

Had the subcontinent been content with its World Cup killing, this would have been an interesting marketing story. What has made it an explosive cricketing one is the use the triumphant administrators made of their new-found financial power. They launched a two-pronged attack. The short-term aim was to make Dalmiya chairman of ICC. The long-term aim was to make sure that the subcontinent was at the centre of the cricket world.

The first battle came to a head during the annual ICC meeting at Lord's in July. With Sir Clyde Walcott coming to the end of his term, Dalmiya stood for the chairmanship, along with Malcolm Gray from Australia and Krish Mackerdhuj of South Africa. On the basis of a simple majority, Dalmiya, bolstered by the Associate countries, had the votes. But he did not command the majority of the Test-playing countries. The rules were less than clear, but the Indians, having taken the advice of a QC, contended that the election should be decided by a simple majority. Walcott argued that any successful chairman must have the backing of a two-thirds majority of the Test-playing countries: six out of nine. Underlying this was concern about what a Dalmiya chairmanship might do. Before the meeting, his thoughts on the future development of the game had been extensively quoted in the media. These included a suggestion that Tests should become more like one-day matches, with every innings limited to certain numbers of overs.

The meeting ended in stalemate. Various suggestions to resolve it, including a second term for Walcott or for future chairmen to rotate country-by-country, were left hanging. But as 1996 turned into 1997, intense negotiations suggested a possible compromise framework: a rotating short-term chairmanship (probably starting with Dalmiya), a new, authoritative executive committee, less power for the Associates. In the meantime Walcott carried on. The wider issue remains: how can ICC accommodate the new power? The Asians want to be at the top table. As one administrator put it: "We do not want to come to Lord's for ICC and just nod our heads like little schoolboys as we used to. Now we come with fully prepared plans and want to be heard as equals."

It is interesting to note that on this issue the old racial solidarity displayed when ICC tackled apartheid in South Africa no longer holds. In subcontinental eyes the West Indies are part of the old power structure, marshalled by England and Australia. Cricket has evolved no mechanism to cope with a changing situation. In 1974 the world football body FIFA elected the Brazilian, Joao Havelange, as president. He defeated Sir Stanley Rous, the symbol of the old European control, by shrewdly aligning the footballing centres of Latin America with the emerging countries. The Europeans have never been totally reconciled to him, but coexistence has been possible because Europe is still the economic powerhouse of the game. New centres such as Africa have come through and football has flourished.

Cricket has never had to cope with a Havelange. The ICC may no longer be a creature of the MCC, but its offices are still at Lord's. And the two men who have presided over it since the MCC President stopped being automatically head of ICC, Sir Colin Cowdrey and Sir Clyde Walcott, have been old-world figures. In such a setting, Dalmiya is seen as a parvenu out to wreck the game. As one (non-Asian) administrator put it: "Dalmiya, personally, may not have been acceptable, and his tactics of trying to storm the citadel were probably wrong. But we have to realise that the subcontinent is a major power in world cricket. The television market there alone makes it very important."

Dalmiya may have been seen as a parvenu, but he shook up cricket's old power equations © AFP

The fear is that if Asia is not kept sweet, it could use its money to seduce Test-playing countries into something like a rival cricket circuit. Here cricket's very structure could be a help. The game is still organised in the 19th century way. Apart from the World Cup every four years, and England's regular series with Australia, there are no fixed dates on the calendar. This means entrepreneurs can, almost at will, construct lucrative cricket tournaments. In 1996 the cricket boards of India and Pakistan, together with Mark McCormack's company TWI, staged five one-day matches in Toronto, the first time official internationals had been played in North America. The enterprise was underpinned by the ability to sell television rights, at $1 million a match, to a satellite company keen to broadcast to the subcontinent.

In May 1997 the Indians are planning to hold a tournament to celebrate 50 years of their independence. Traditionally, the idea of playing in India in May was considered preposterous. But in order to avoid the worst of the intense heat, the Indians intend to start matches at about 3.30 in the afternoon and play until midnight. The Indians can contemplate this because the profits of the World Cup have helped them install lights in most of their grounds. And they know the TV rights will fetch large sums of money. Already, cricket in Sri Lanka from August has cut into the latter half of the northern summer, which used to be the exclusive cricket preserve of England. A tournament in May will be another dent.

The end result could be a far more powerful ICC - more like FIFA or the International Olympic Committee than the present small-scale set-up consisting of David Richards, the chief executive, a couple of assistants and a few phones. The subcontinent may not even want such an outcome: its bid for power should be seen as more akin to the barons at Runnymede extracting concessions from King John. But just as the Magna Carta led to consequences undreamt of by the barons, so this could make ICC the real powerhouse of cricket.

But is this what cricket wants, or needs? At present the game has no centralised bureaucracy, no Havelange at its helm. Does it really want to exchange the cosy club - admittedly biased in favour of the older cricketing countries - for an elective dictatorship at the mercy of the richest? In such a situation the subcontinent may even find that it has created an animal it cannot always control.

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Many people may not be familiar with Project Snow, or how close world cricket came to a serious split. This summary of Project Snow is written based upon the information provided in Graham Halbish’s book, Run Out. As such, the information must be considered in light of any potential biases as there is no ‘other side’ to the story.

In 1996, there was potentially a major schism in the world of cricket. The ICC was starting to show major cracks in its supposed united front, with the entire structure under review. The sub-continent teams had been making a significant, and to be fair, overdue, claim for the England/Australia dominated council to be more equitable. However, as with any process of change, there were egos and powerplays on both sides that were preventing a suitable compromise to be reached. The running of the World Cups and the lucrative sponsorship and television rights made for some very interesting politics.

In 1996, the ICC chairman was Sir Clyde Walcott. He expressed his frustration with the role, feeling that it had become non-cricket related and focused primarily upon legal arguments from the various individual countries who were all more interested in feathering their own nest than the good of the game. Walcott’s term was up, and the voting process to replace him became a farce. It was this election, and the associated political games, that prompted Australia, West Indies, England and New Zealand to devise a plan that was eventually called ‘Project Snow’.

Interestingly, Australia did not see the sub-continent as having caused the problem, but rather South Africa. India put forward Jagmohan Dalmiya their nomination for chairman, whilst Australia nominated Malcolm Gray. As expected, the sub-continent supported the nomination of Dalmiya, whilst England, West Indies and New Zealand support Gray. South Africa initially indicated they supported Australia’s nomination. However, Ali Bacher, who was the managing director of the United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCBSA), then started playing both sides off against each other. After many years in the wilderness, South Africa were starting to try and flex their political muscles. The Australian camp were not upset with the Indian nomination of Dalmiya, or the support from Pakistan and Sri Lanka. That was expected. However, South Africa’s games had thrown the whole process into turmoil. The Indians didn’t know if they could rely on South Africa, and neither did Australia. In the end, South Africa abstained and the vote was tied at 4-4. This failure to arrive at a clear decision was a disaster, with legal challenges and complaints being thrown by both sides.

Australia, England, West Indies and New Zealand now realized that South Africa could easily jump into bed completely with the sub-continent. The cricketing boards of the four countries were particularly dismayed at the way South Africa were acting, and they agreed to examine their options. The job was given to Australian Cricket Board CEO Graham Halbish to draw up a plan of series involving Australia, West Indies, England and New Zealand. It was recognized that there was significant money in India, however, without the big drawcards of Australia, England and West Indies (who were not yet on the slippery slope to oblivion they are now), it was felt unlikely that the sub-continent could survive on their own for long. At that time, the biggest tours for Australia were England and West Indies, and the proposed program saw them each touring Australia once every three years.

This plan, code named Project Snow, was presented to the CEOs of the England, West Indies and New Zealand boards. Incidentally, the name Project Snow came from ICC CEO David Richards, even though he knew nothing about it. Information was sought from Richards about an issue, and he advised them that he was snowed into his house, and nothing was as important as his ‘Project Snow’ of shoveling tons of the white stuff off his driveway. They then decided to use this innocent comment as the code-name for their plan. Thankfully, common sense eventually prevailed and Sir John Anderson, the New Zealand representative, was able to come up with a solution to the issue of chairmanship of the ICC that prevented the plan going any further.

It is a bit scary to consider how close the cricketing world came to a disastrous split, and we hope that the ICC can start showing some leadership and less partisanship in order to ensure that all countries and people are equally represented.

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So lets understand this then - an Indian wins the ICC chairmanship based on a simple majority, a result not acceptable to the status quo powers. The rules are altered to prevent this. And in the meantime, plans are made for an alternate status quo.

And in the 12 years from then until now, not much has changed.

For all the talk of the subcontinental countries voting as a bloc, the Project Snow countries havent exactly broken rank and voted along the lines of pragmatism and the issue at hand.

Daivid Gower, in his article in the Times, writes

India has been a supporter of Zimbabwe for years and has in return been assured at all times of Zimbabwe’s vote whenever needed. But surely this is no time to allow a blinkered view of world affairs to affect their judgment. It is one thing to claim politics and sport should not mix but the BCCI are past masters in the politics of sport and are world leaders when it comes to the business of sport. Their coffers are fuller than all others and if they wish to be a major power, they should assume the greater, wider responsibilities that come with that power.

If India is indeed a power and aspires to be a major power and is expected to shoulder the responsibilities that come with it, where are the trappings of that power?

Remember this gem from Andrew Miller

Going head-to-head are two candidates who represent the two intractable extremes of the ICC's large and dysfunctional family - the ECB's David Morgan, representative of cricket's old world, and the BCCI president, Sharad Pawar - a busy career politician who has had time to attend just 80 minutes of ICC business in 12 months.

Despite - or perhaps because of - the complicated voting procedure used to decide between the two back in March, the issue ended up being fudged and Sonn was asked to stay in office for an extra term. But it was quite clear how the land lay even then. In a 3-3 tied ballot, Morgan's support came from Bob Merriman (representing Australia and New Zealand), Stephen Camacho (West Indies and England) and John Blair (South Africa and Zimbabwe), while Pawar was backed by Dr AC Muttiah (India and Sri Lanka), Mueen Afzal (Bangladesh and Pakistan) and Imran Khwaja (associate and affiliate members).

With the Asian bloc unbreakable, all it would take for a Pawar victory would be a shifting of support of the African contingent, and then Pandora's Box really would be cracked open. For all his faults, Sonn remained a cricket-lover at heart, something that has not always been apparent at the fiscally obsessed BCCI. With Pawar installed at the head of the ICC, the way would be cleared for the takeover of the ICC that has long been threatened by the frustrated Indians, who represent 70% of the game's income and whose early exit from the World Cup conveniently distanced them from most - if not all - of the tournament's myriad failings.

And this one from Christopher Martin Jenkins

India's grip on world cricket would become more or less total if the 50-50 decision on who succeeds Malcolm Speed as chief executive of the ICC in June favours Inder Singh Bindra, one of the three most powerful men in the sport on the sub-continent. The four senior ICC figures charged with making the choice between Bindra and the rival preferred by two of them must be made soon, probably at the ICC's next meeting, on Monday and Tuesday of next week.

Bindra is highly capable, having put much of his time, money and influence into developing a splendid modern stadium in his native Chandigarh. He was chairman of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and he successfully fought to unseat Jagmohan Dalmiya, his rival from Calcutta. Bindra's competence is not in doubt, but the fact remains that there are other good candidates who have not been closely involved with cricket politics.

If Bindra were to be appointed, he would be joined in Dubai within two years by Sharad Pawar, the Indian cabinet minister who chairs the BCCI and will succeed David Morgan as ICC chairman in June 2010. Such a stranglehold by the country that generates almost two thirds of the world's income from cricket through its massive worldwide television audience could not be in the sport's best interests.

David Gower continues

It would be a scandal if that part of the world were to put its own interests first. India has the perfect opportunity to show it does care about more than just the money.

In a way this is the BCCI’s “Collingwood moment”; they have the chance to do something worthwhile and right – at the right time.

Given that there are 10 votes in the ICC and given that the Project Snow countries are reconciled to be hostile to the Asian bloc and given that all important votes require a simple and/or 2/3rd's majority, is it little wonder then that Zimbabwe becomes important? And given the circumstances, why begrudge India's support for Zimbabwe?

For once, Tim May got it right -

"An independent review will determine what is the best and most applicable structure for cricket's international governing body. We strongly believe that the present structure ... is outdated and not in the best interests of the game."

Thing is, any reform of the ICC will lead to a greater power shift than is at the moment - the Asian countries have 1) more passion and 2) more revenues than the Project Snow countries.

Can the Project Snow countries reconcile themselves with these new realities?