Can ICC scrub the game clean?

By Ted Corbett

LONDON, MAY 1. The International Cricket Council (ICC) emergency meeting at Lord's on Tuesday of all nine Test-playing countries to discuss the scandal arising from Hansie Cronje's admission that he has received money from a bookmaker is the most important in the long history of the game. It would be unforgivable if the delegates returned home without setting up a means of curing this spreading cancer.

Yet, there is a growing feeling that the two-day session will achieve little, apart from a few statements of the obvious, a pious hope or two that an amnesty will bring forward the wrongdoers and allow everyone to settle down and play cricket again.

It is partly because in the past ICC has been an ineffective world governing body, underfunded, unwilling to act and more likely to dither than lead from the front.

``We will set up a working party.'' ``We will report back in a year.'' ``We hope to make progress.'' These have been the common statements from past annual meetings from the days when ICC was effectively run by the MCC secretariat and little better when it moved into what used to be a toilet in an obscure corner near the Grandstand.

It was not a proper place for a world authority to have its headquarters and ICC did its best to live up to its inappropriate home. Perhaps, it did not matter too much when ICC ruled on the dwindling over rate, or the number of bouncers, or sledging or the growing aggression. But the new problem is far greater.

It has been alleged, by more than one prominent player, or commentator, or official that international games are being fixed. This state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue or the game will become a mockery, with results less reliable than those seen in the ring at World Wrestling Federation tournaments.

So far there is no published agenda and the other conditions which arrived by e-mail this week-end do not boost one's confidence in the outcome. A media advisory tells me that ``there will be a press briefing at the end of a full session on the first day'' and ``a statement at one o'clock on the second day.'' Will there, indeed?

How can such a crucial meeting have such an exact timetable? Supposing the report of Judge Malik Qayyum of Pakistan proves so damning that it requires twice as long to debate as the timetable allows? Luckily there is no need to worry about that. It now seems unlikely that Pakistan will have its much-delayed report since it had already been planned to bring it to the June annual meeting of ICC and apparently a change of plan is impossible. Man can fly to the Moon, son can phone father from Tokyo to Birmingham in an instant, couples can marry on the Internet, a camera in space can picture a tiny wrist watch and read the time. But in Century 21 don't ask a Board of Control to change its plans. That needs time.

Of course, it would have been perfect if a prominent cricket administrator could be appointed to lead a worldwide inquiry into this shocking subject. But who? Why not Lord MacLaurin, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, a noble lord, untainted by any of the muck flying around other governing bodies, with a wide experience of business and a desire to see cricket as a clean and proper game.

Sadly milord has not yet squashed the tiny matter of Chris Lewis, the one-time England all-rounder who says he was offered œ300,000 to fix a Test and that he knows the names of three England cricketers who, according to an Indian businessman, have already taken money. Lewis may sue. Lewis is taking advice from lawyers about a new law which protects those who blow the whistle. Lewis is proving difficult and many now see that he has a case which must be answered.

Dr. Ali Bacher, the managing director and driving force behind the United Cricket Board of South Africa, is too busy attempting to heal the wounds left by Cronje and, as all the First World knows, the Third World countries are up to their necks in this nasty corruption.

Mr. Malcolm Gray, the Australian who will succeed Mr. Jagmohan Dalmiya as chairman, is a plain-speaking man who might set in motion a thorough cleaning of the world's dressing rooms. I would applaud his appointment even though it would make the Aussies even more certain that they are Olympian gods on cricket's moral high ground. But you only have to say the names ``Mark Waugh and Shane Warne'' to realise that Australia is as unclean as any other country.

The only answer is to put the responsibility in the hands of a man from outside the immediate circle of cricket officials and at one time that would have brought forward a dozen candidates. Not any longer. Few men of integrity and standing are still convinced that a massive effort for cricket is worthwhile; and it will require years of hard work if cricket is to be restored to its place as a symbol of all that used to be good in sport.

Some will argue that if there are drug cheats in athletics, criminal gamblers in football, frauds who have played rugby under false pretences and even scandals in pub skittles, then cricket is only following a trend. We should, they say, deal with each case as some Sunday tabloid brings it to the notice of the authorities and make no attempt to scrub cricket clean.

That is too much to accept which is why there is such a heavy responsibility on the shoulders of the ICC delegates as they walk through the Grace Gates on Tuesday morning.

If only old W.G. was still around to offer advice or even lead the planning. Unhappily his golden era is long gone and in the new sporting setting cricket will have to find a modern solution before we all write RIP on its grave.

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