Waugh of the Worlds

Steve Waugh, "saving Test cricket", and the ICC's role

Gideon Haigh

From The Times:

Steve Waugh, the former Australian captain, has launched a scathing attack on cricket’s administrators, accusing them of not caring about the future of Test cricket after South Africa’s decision to send a second-string squad to New Zealand next month and prioritise their own domestic T20 competition over the two-Test series.

Waugh, 58, said the decision by Cricket South Africa to send a squad that includes seven uncapped players, including the stand-in captain Neil Brand, was a “defining moment in the death of Test cricket” and called on the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the boards of the “big three” cricketing nations — India, England and Australia — to intervene.

And so forth until the eyes glaze, so accustomed are we to death of cricket stories, whose heritage dates, of course, to 1882.  At least Waugh here shows a glimmer of awareness that we have heard this before: he calls it a ‘defining moment’ in Test cricket’s death, even if the only defining moment I can think of in death is, y’know, yer actual death.  He continues: ‘Surely the ICC, along with the cricket boards of India, England and Australia, must step in to protect the purest form of the game?’ Except that the real ‘surely’ here is the sense that any sentence beginning with the form of words ‘Surely the ICC must….’ pre-renders the ensuing content irrelevant, because surely the ICC will do nothing of the kind.

In fact, Waugh’s remarks sound like nothing other than a message in a bottle tossed over SS Cricket’s side as it commenced sinking fifteen years ago after colliding with the Iceberg Premier League. The bottle’s retrievers shake their heads sadly: alas, it is too late to rescue the survivors.

Illustration by Fisher Classics www.fisherclassics.com

We’ve just had an enjoyable Boxing Day Test; David Warner ensures at least a little theatre in the New Years’ sequel.  But when Australia next takes the field, it will not only be without Warner, but without Jason Holder, Nicholas Pooran and Kyle Mayers in their West Indies opposition: they have turned up their noses at central contracts in search of T20 opportunities. ‘The squad has been affected by the unavailability of some key players,’ said chairman of selectors Desmond Haynes, as if Old Mother Hubbard had reported her cupboard affected by the unavailability of some key bones.

In the case of the New Zealand series to which Waugh refers, Cricket South Africa are in the novel position of receiving NOCs from themselves as a shareholder in the second SA20 (‘Errr, we need some players?’ ‘Thanks, take as many as you want’).  Also benefiting: broadcaster SuperSport, almost an interlocking shareholder of CSA, and old mate Sundar Raman, who could buy from a miser, sell to a skinflint and still bank a profit.

But, of course, we knew this already, because South Africa almost self-owned themselves out of the World Cup by withdrawing from an ODI series in Australia a year ago in order to ensure a full complement of players for the inaugural SA20.  If CSA weren’t going to turn out for ODIs in Australia, they were never going to send a first-choice team from Tests in Mount Maunganui and Hamilton.  When New Zealand Cricket declined to reschedule the Tests, it was only the precise terms of the squib that were at issue: now we know that South Africa will be represented by…..well, roughly, South Africa E.

But what exactly can the ICC ‘do’ about this under the terms of its constitution?  Its salient clause, article 5 (E), more or less puts paid to all those well-meaning ‘surely the ICC must intervene’ sentiments in just a few roundabout words.  ICC objectives, we learn, are ‘to control and manage the organisation, sanctioning and scheduling of ICC Events’ and, errr, that’s it.  Just in case you mistake ICC for a governing body, the clause continues to ‘acknowledge that it is Members’ responsibility to do the same [control and manage] at national level and in respect of bilaterally arranged international cricket events between Members, in each case so as to ensure that the sporting calendar for Cricket is organised and scheduled in accordance with the best long-term interests and priorities of the sport as a whole’.

It’s actually pretty hard to work out what weight the last thirty words of that sentence pull.  ‘The best long-term interests and priorities of the sport as a whole’: what does that even mean, other than ‘what we reckon’?  It’s just a pablum, in case you thought ‘Cricket’ was managed in accordance with the interests of the World Bank, the illuminati or whatever.  ‘Sport as a whole’ might as well be ‘sport as a hole’ for all its meaninglessness.

But let’s drill a little further into the ICC’s ‘Regulations on Sanctioning of Events & Player Release’ - the statutes concerning NOCs.  You first hear the echo of Clause 5 (E) in the ‘Explanatory Note’ to Article 2.

Like most sports, cricket depends for its effective organisation, administration and development on a pyramid regulatory structure, with National Cricket Federations exercising control over cricket in their respective territories, and the ICC addressing global issues where the National Cricket Federations consider that collective action is required. This pyramid governance structure is vital to the regulatory integrity of the sport, enabling the ICC and its National Cricket Federations to ensure the uniform application of rules protecting the sport and its stakeholders throughout the sport, wherever it is played, and to hold all participants accountable under those rules -- including anti-doping rules and other rules and regulations designed to protect participants and/or to preserve the integrity of the sport -- in a fair and transparent fashion.

Accordingly, it is the exclusive right and responsibility of each National Cricket Federation to retain control over cricket matches and events played within its territory, and therefore to determine whether or not a particular match played within its territory should be recognised or not.

Ummm, hang on.  If a ‘National Cricket Federation’ has ‘the exclusive right to control cricket matches and events played within its territory’, is that a ‘pyramid structure’ and ‘uniform application of rules’?  Isn’t it a flat structure with a sovereign application of rules?  And do boards not believe that franchise cricket is an issue where ‘collective action is required’, involving as it does international cricketers potentially unavailable for international cricket.  Well, maybe not if they're the 'big three' boards, especially the Board of Control for Cricket in India, for whom the fewer checks and poorer balances the better.  You get the feeling that the ‘Accordingly’ with which the first sentence in the aforementioned second paragraph springs less from the need to establish congruity than to obscure the actual lack of connection.  Because let’s now go to article 3.5, which in its attitude to the cricket’s fixturing hierarchy must represent the ICC’s current position.

The ICC and its Members recognise the overriding importance of international cricket as the lifeblood of the sport around the world. By providing a showcase for the sport to a wide international audience, by generating significant commercial revenues that can be invested in development work at every level throughout the sport, and by providing opportunities for Associate and Affiliate Members to improve their playing standards by competing against Full Members, international cricket plays a vital role in developing interest and participation in the sport both in established cricketing powers and in emerging nations, and therefore in broadening the competitive playing base and public interest in the sport that are vital to the long-term future health of the sport. International cricket therefore has primacy over domestic cricket.

Now, most cricket followers I know would regard the proposition that ‘international cricket…has primacy over domestic cricket’ as inarguable.  Certainly Steve Waugh would.  And it amounts to the entire raison d’être for the NOC: if cricket’s all just a bit of a winner-take-all muddle, then what’s there to object to?  Maybe by now you’re confused.  But don’t worry: so are the members of ICC.  In the case of the West Indian team in Australia and the South African team picked for New Zealand, the ICC's policies have been deployed in precisely the reverse of the way intended.

In his remarks this week, Waugh called for a ‘universal match fee’ for all players playing Test cricket to eliminate disparities in earnings.  This idea of a centralised wage fixing is not a new thing for him; on the contrary, he first mentioned the idea to me in an interview for Wisden Cricket Monthly in 1999, having come from interacting with players from other countries in the World Cup in England.  It occasioned no interest back then, and in modern cricket’s neo-liberal hellscape sounds almost like communism.  But it does draw attention to another factor shaping the forthcoming tours: the financial regime, now about a quarter of a century old, under which profits (and losses) from tours remain in host countries.  Because, having no stake in New Zealand Cricket’s broadcasting or commercial outcomes, there’s no financial incentive for Cricket South Africa to send a full-strength team, and the only moral incentive is an expectation of reciprocity - that they want NZC to send a full-strength team when the time comes.  So you needn't be a moral philosopher or a game theorist to discern the potential long-term consequences of CSA's short-term expedient: in short changing New Zealand, South Africa is more or less daring New Zealand to short change them back.

Pat Cummins was heard on Tuesday to wish for a ‘silver bullet’ to save Test cricket, because that’s what we’ve come to - praying for miracles, dreaming of Hail Marys, because we know that the system is wholly unfit for purpose.  But ‘saving Test cricket’ is not the issue here.  What’s on show is cricket's complete and utter lack of collective willpower - a lack, as I said, that's actually enshrined in the ICC’s own foundational documents.  It’s not that our administrators hate Test cricket - I suspect they like it well enough.  It’s that, basically, they hate each other.  What next?  More of the same but worse, I fear.  Because to paraphrase Paul Keating, always back self-interest; at least you know he’s a cunt.