ICC create new synthetic lifeform

Doctors promise to develop anti-biotic to wipe out this simple, if potentially nasty, lifeform.

Speed Away

Early morning drives around the M25 are surprisingly fast, and for that reason all the more pleasurable.

The sun is shining, the cows strut proudly across the lush fields and all the grotty ABSO children gravitate into the Vortex of large shopping centres leaving me free to enjoy the breaking Spring unbottled.

Not just me, though. I have a new companion. He used to work. He used to be a busy man. He used to be the, oh god I hate even typing this, the Chief Executive Officer of the IC-bloody-C

Now he’s not.

A man of energy and self-belief, who once charged across the world arguing for his ideas on cricket. Of course, those ideas were fundamentally corrupt, but the man was decent and his management was generally competent.

But it would be naïve to suppose that these alone were sufficient qualities to ensure survival in a complex, multi-national organisation. Speed was undone by the politics.

I received a lot of stick from Indians when I criticised the IPL. They felt slighted. It seemed as though I was attacking India. If not Indian directly, I was offending their property, which somehow becomes the same thing.

Although facts are short at the moment, we can detect a similar dynamic in the ICC. Speed seems to be ousted because of a severe rift between himself and senior South Africans on the Board and Executive Committee.

We are, I suppose, all products of our countries, and to an extent, we reflect the received wisdom of cultures when looking abroad. Malcolm Speed, an Australian (a country prominent in the condemnation of Robert Mugabe’s regime) has been hawkish when dealing with Zimbabwe.

Indeed, after a forensic audit carried out by KPMG uncovered wide-spread financial mismanagement and evidence of money laundering, Speed condemned the Zimbabwean cricket board, in a leaked memo, stating that they had "deliberately falsified" their accounts.

The ICC decided to sweep this negative audit opinion under the carpet, against the protests of Speed. Whereas Ray Mali, the ICC president and a South Africa, has called for a more softly-softly approach, eerily reflecting his own country’s foreign policy.

Of course, there were other conflicts with the BCCI and what not, but it was the total deterioration between the CEO and president that hastened Speed’s departure.

It is sad, if understandable, that the important committees and managements are divided by shoddy and irreverent geopolitical positions outside the world of cricket. But its susceptibility to this sort of unknowing malleability it’s indicative of the ICC’s weakness as an institution which is not capable of standing up for itself, let alone representing cricket.

Perhaps it would be a little nationalistic of me to suggest a return to the MCC days…

ICC indulges in abstract recruitment

Who’s the next ICC boss?

Well, no one really knows. It’s all a bit of a cock-up.

The ICC wants Imtiaz Patel, who currently works for “SuperSport” (don’t ask, I don’t know), and have announced his appointment in “abstract” terms. Above is an artistic interpretation of those terms.

See, I’m feeling a bit creative at the moment, as I went to the Tate Modern yesterday. However, as is the way with modern art, I was repeatedly made to feel like a pervert. In one of the seedy, small side-rooms of the exhibition they show short films by artists.

In one such private booth, I watched a fantastic film called “Meat Joy.” It essentially filmed an orgy, where a large number of people perform erotic acts on pieces of meat. Just as I was watching an actress grind happily against a dead fish, a woman entered the room.

She looked at the film. She looked at the depravity. Then she turned at looked at me. She looked at my depravity. Her disgust bore through me like a Denis Lillie bouncer. She left, appalled. I left, ashamed.

Later, I found another little video room. “What can be in here?” I innocently thought.

A film showing a woman, behind a strip of paper. Fairly innocuous, I thought. She then wrote her name on the paper. Perfectly normal, I mused, but what could it mean? Then see began to tear away at the paper, gradually revealing to the me, and me alone, that she wasn’t wearing anything.

Just as ripped off the last, crucial screen, she stood there naked before me. Her eyes were full of disgust, “you pervert” she silently said. At this moment, the same women who walked in on me during my meat shame strolled in. She looked at the naked person on film. She then turned at me. She seemed surprised to see me, and then not surprised to see me.

They both stared at me. I had to sit and absorb the revulsion of two women, one naked and on film, one real and sickened by my deviancy.

I just wanted to look at some pretty pictures.

Anyway, above is my interpretation of the ICC’s current situation.

So, who is this Imtiaz Patel fella? By all accounts, he sounds like a prat. Ken Borland, a South African sports journalist, noted,

"While he always exudes polite charm in public, Patel is known to have a scathing tongue in the privacy of the boardroom and even hardened former cricketers who work as commentators for SuperSport are known to slink into the corners when he lets fly."

This is deeply unprofessional and prattish behaviour.

But, I wouldn’t mind this, so long as he liberated the ICC from its current status as “play thing of the BCCI.”

Yeah…that’s all I have to say.

Pakistan spring forth from India’s can of worms

The ensuing madness that India have created has emboldened the Pakistan Cricket Board to request the ridiculous: Overturn the forfeited test.

Never mind the fact that it is only a year and a half late and unnecessarily re-opening old wounds, it’s just a bit daft. Can any imagine a possible world where the ICC would reverse its own rulings? Perhaps the key change in context is that subcontinental sides feel they can bully the ICC to do anything.

Well done India. You’ve completely cocked up international cricket. Nice one.

At the heart of this ridiculous series of events is the unsportsmanlike pressure behind the scenes. The ICC succumbed to Pakistan’s insistence that the ball tampering charges were dropped. Yet, despite the lack of any novel evidence to suggest that there was no interference with the ball and Daryl Hair’s maintained status as a “pukka bloke” by the ICC, the accusation was dropped.

Just how pathetic, derisible and shit the ICC is begs belief. Could they not foresee by granting Pakistan this impossible request that the PCB would inevitably move to annul that test match? Now the ICC has admitted that Inzy was right to protest a decision – so the match was unfairly forfeited. So, the only logical course of action is to annul the test.

Even though no new evidence has emerged and the ICC still considers Hair a reliable arbiter.

The ICC: installing confidence through incompetence.

I'd like to take this opportunity to honour my great blogging friend, the most unwormlike and tolerably opinionated J-Rod. If I had a real, live, proper cricket team, I'd definitely make him the side's photographer. Some of his shots are stunning.