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DEAR REDIFF

Dalmiya to bring new ideas to ancient body

Prem Panicker

Well, who would have thought, even at the start of this decade, that the headquarters of the International Cricket Council would be based in Calcutta?

Don't go haywire there and imagine that Lord's is, or will be when Jagmohan Dalmiya takes office as the first president of the ICC in June, deader than the dodo. What Dalmiya has in mind is to set up a working office of the ICC at Calcutta, since that is where he will be based.

Dalmiya's takeover, and his proposal to work out of his home base, is the first signal that the centre of power in international cricket is ready to shift from England to the Asian sub-continent - because it needs to be kept firmly in mind that Pakistan and Sri Lanka are four square behind India in all matters pertaining to international cricket.

The question that needs to be asked, first up, is - is this a good thing for cricket.

And one gets the sneaking suspicion that the answer is yes. Recent events have indicated all too clearly that the ICC has, increasingly, become a body totally devoid of teeth. Bribery scandals have proliferated, and continue to hog international headlines, without the world body showing even the remotest inclination to take any steps to investigate the matter, and come with with a verdict that, whichever way it goes, will at the least dispel the cloud of uncertainity that hangs over the game today.

At a different level, the ICC has shown absolutely no inclination to involve itself in the conduct of the game. When Australia and the West Indies refused to play their World Cup engagements in Calcutta, the ICC said they had no influence on the individual boards; when Australia accused Muralitharan of chucking, the ICC cleared the bowler but professed itself unable to take action in what was an obvious case of slander; when the umpires of its panel repeatedly goofed in full public view, the ICC showed neither the will nor inclination to review the umpires on its panel and act against the incompetents... the list is endless, and every instance merely underscores the fact that the ICC, today, is a cosy little club whose members meet over their whisky and sodas, argue erudite cricketing questions, and remain totally out of touch with today's reality.

Before asking the question of whether or no Dalmiya can make a difference, the first question is, why does this state of affairs exist. The obvious reason is that till now, countries such as England, Australia, New Zealand, and increasingly, South Africa, have been prone to treating the ICC as some kind of monopoly. With the West Indies playing puppet, the four countries mentioned above have ensured that a status quo favourable to them have remained in situ, and as long as this situation persists, there appears no hope of matters improving.

In this context, the very fact that a person from outside that axis will take office as head of the ICC is a harbinger of change. And Dalmiya can be faulted on many fronts, but even his worst critics will concede that he is a man of great energy and enthusiasm for the game, and prone to err, if he does err, on the side of doing too much rather than too little.

One argument I keep hearing against Dalmiya is that he is a newcomer, an upstart, who has no sense of cricketing tradition. Fudge! I mean, what tradition are we talking of here? The question of whether or no women should be admitted to the Lord's pavilion? How is that a question that concerns anyone other than the Lord's management? And how do we persist in talking tradition when, all over the world, cricket has revolutionised into a ritzy, glitzy spectator sport, with music blaring between overs, cheerleaders showing leg on the field between innings, with cameras installed in stumps and mikes inlaid in the turf and umpires walking about with walkie talkies and all the rest of it?

The very fact that Dalmiya is not one of the old school of whisky-drinking, cigar smoking "cricket authorities" who profess to stand for tradition is, in itself, his best recommendation in an era when the game is making dramatic changes to keep its spectator appeal alive in the fast-food age.

But it does not follow that Dalmiya will have a smooth tenure during his presidentship. The very fact that even given Dalmiya's majority support among the ICC members and associates, the England-Australia-South Africa-New Zealand axis threatened, initially, to break away from the ICC if he was elected president indicate just how far these countries are prepared to go to keep their grip on the game intact. And Dalmiya can take it as a given that no matter what changes he does try to introduce, there will be stiff opposition from these four nations, and their supporters.

But what precisely does Dalmiya hope to accomplish? "I can talk only after June 17," says the heir apparent. But his agenda is, in fact, no secret. Here are the main planks:

1) Dalmiya plans to make cricket far more representative, in the sense that he would like to see many more nations forming part of the Test-playing fraternity. And one of his first priorities is to assess the claims of countries like Bangladesh, Kenya, Ireland, Canada and such for full cricketing status. True, if he can mastermind their inclusion in the ranks, then he will receive their unqualified support, so there is definitely a personal motive there - but it is still a fact that such a move will broadbase cricket, and that is a good thing by any yardstick.

2) Dalmiya intends to ensure that cricketing tours are more evenly distributed, rather than the present situation where a few teams spend all their time playing each other. A classic instance is England and Australia - which plays each other over a full five-Test series every year, though England has in the past five years managed just one Test against Sri Lanka, while Australia has for instance managed just the one-off Test against India in four years. This is obviously a ridiculously incestuous state of affairs, and introducing norms to ensure that each team plays all others in a given period of time is a major point on the Dalmiya agenda.

3) Inevitably, Dalmiya's businessman-origins ensure that it is the treasury that gets his immediate attention - and the ICC president-to-be indicates that the ICC treasury is not exactly overflowing with riches. Thus, he is busy drawing up plans to attract corporate sponsorship for the game at all levels - and if he needs to push through changes in the game to attract the advertisers, then that is precisely what he will do.

Dalmiya has already discussed at length some of his ideas. One pertains to limiting the number of overs in Tests - the most common suggestion is 120 for the first innings, and 90 in the second - in order to ensure results. And much as traditionalists cringe at the thought, it must be admitted that there is merit in it. "At the least," says Dalmiya, "let's start a debate - and let the international cricketers themselves play leading roles in the debate, rather than a bunch of administrators who have no stake in the game beyond their purely selfish interests."

True. It is, I personally would think, time the game were taken out of the hands of the "traditionalists" and put in the hands of the players themselves. And in this context, the most laudable facet of Dalmiya's stewardship is that within a month of taking office, he will chair a meeting of international cricket captains aimed at discussing the state of the game today, and finding out from the people in the hot seat just what, in their perception, the problems are.

True, some of Dalmiya's mutterings - such as the suggestion that cricket should be played all night - tend to provoke a wry, incredulous smile. But hey, a man overfull of ideas, I would think, is still preferrable to one with nary a thought beyond whether there is, in Lord's, enough room to build the second toilet that will become necessary if women are to be admitted to that holy of cricketing holies.