By Nasser Khan (January 21st, 2014)

A league system in which about half of the teams participating cannot be relegated, that is one of the ideas put forward by those who seek to govern cricket. Put aside the politics and consider this purely in the paradigm of sporting competition: the consequences of losing, the spoils of victory. At the grand table of world sports, cricket will no longer be the loveable eccentric, but instead the oddball whose wealth drove him insane and who believes that insuring against the consequences of losing, beyond the loss itself, is workable in the sporting arena. Spot fixing? That's just individuals making a quick buck, the non-relegation proposal is far worse – it's result-fixing.

Extrapolating the loss-management “working document”, it doesn't take a leap of faith to envisage a situation in future where the three teams – Australia, England and India – are offered byes into the semi-finals to secure the financial success of a major tournament, and nor will it be a significant deviation from the non-relegation clause; it will be another case of money and non-completion. It also vindicates all those who have previously been labelled as conspiracy theorists; the BCCI and old colonial powers should never be trusted on any cricketing matter. Giles Clarke has of course been the Chairman of the ICC’s Pakistan task force, and it now seems that the PCB were right to sneer at the document for improving the governance of Pakistani cricket presented by his committee, given the hand he’s had in the new proposed ICC structure in which any semblance of fair-dealing and governance is put aside for money. It was a similar situation when the PCB decided to not cooperate with the ICC in the wake of the spot-fixing scandal in 2010; the inherent bias in the organisation leaves it with little credibility.

The reaction of the other sides will be interesting and ultimately the deciding factor on whether the changes come to pass. Once the existing ICC management committee is effectively disbanded, there are no guarantees the other teams will fall under the umbrella of the new system. What if Pakistan and South Africa, who have shown just a couple of months ago that they are willing to form alliances to counter the reduced tours that the working document promises, decide to not participate in events organised under the new system? The proposals require complicit approval of the remaining sides and how strong they are at this pivotal juncture will decide their ultimate fates. The Indian revenue stream is effectively dead for Pakistan so that will not change. Pakistan are probably the ones who have least to fear as England will always make money from Pakistan tours, they don't visit Australia very often so and the India revenue stream ran dry years ago. A World Cup without the potential of a Pakistan-India match-up, as we found in the West Indies in 2007, severely diminishes the bottom line. Australia have a World Cup coming up next year. Should South Africa, Sri Lanka, New Zealand Pakistan consider a pull out? It would be interesting to see how committed the ACB were to the new system if such a threat was put on the table.

The ACB-ECB-BCCI is an uneasy alliance of course. Two of the boards are natural bedfellows but over the last decade, the English have made no secret of their utter disdain for the Indians. Giles Clarke it seems has tried his best to avoid having to form any kind of cooperative agreement with the BCCI, reaching out to other sides over the years including the West Indies, who rewarded him with the Alan Stanford saga and then, by allowing Pakistan to host home matches at Lords and Headingley, his guests thanked him by spot fixing that very summer. England must have realised there are no other reliable parties available for partnership and this cartel was almost inevitable the day Team England overtook The England Team, the side losing its soul under a robotic coach and his band of mercenaries masquerading as proud Englishmen, as alluded to by Graeme Swann.

The Ashes generates revenue for those involved, but is it a sustainable product? It’s a sustainable competition between two teams, but will it always be financially viable? The Sky coverage, which seemingly doesn’t have a break let alone a reverse gear, has continued with the razzmatazz and wall-to-wall coverage despite their pundits clearly having thrown in the towel weeks ago. Worse still, imagine another 15-year period of dominance by the Australians like the one that concluded in 2005; even England fans, the cash cow of all cash cows, would turn away, particularly given the astronomically high ticket prices which the leveraged-up debt-ridden county sides have to charge to justify the expense of their bid for an ECB Test match. The Indian celebrations after they beat Pakistan in the dead rubber on the last limited overs tour was excruciating, almost propagandist and no matter how many fireworks the curators set off, or how many graphics the Sky producers fill our TV screens with, the vast majority of fans know and understand the shallowness of it all. Cricket is a sport which is played competitively by seven teams. The current India, England and Australia sides have one or two genuinely quality players and reducing the variety due to short-term monetary considerations in a power game being played by administrators is doomed to fail; the England-Australia-India axis will eventually collapse.

The final question has to be why it's taken over a week for the news to break. It's the PCB who apparently “accidentally” leaked the news but why have those affected kept quiet? It perhaps is a worrying indication of back-door deals and promises, which no doubt will be broken in the long run. Previous actions suggest the administrators at the PCB or those in charge of Sri Lankan cricket could well be susceptible to short-termism themselves, perhaps accept a one-off bonanza payment which would doom them to secondary-citizenship. If that is the case, then they will have as much sporting blood on their hands as the new trio bringing the game into disrepute.

Discuss!