Wisden criticises ICC

By Ted Corbett

LONDON, APRIL 7. Wisden, perpetually known as The Cricketers' Bible but more often an annual imitation of The Times and its nickname of The Thunderer, has launched into an attack on the International Cricket Council. The almanack is run at present by one of the mildest men who has ever sat in the editor's chair. Graham Wright is a New Zealander with a publishing background - he wrote the footballer George Best's autobiography - and for him to catch fire about the inadequacy of the world's governing body is a sure sign that there is a serious wrong to be, if you will forgive the pun, righted.

ICC has always been an easy target since dither is its preferred mode of response to any great question and in the past troubled year when decisive action was needed it has wavered more

than usual. Its functionaries will remind me that they installed Sir Paul Condon to investigate match-fixing only a month after Hansie Cronje's confessions but as much of the detective work has been done by Indian dot.com organisations as by Sir Paul. We await his report with interest; but await is the operative word, in true ICC tradition.

They deserve all the opprobrium Wisden - whose editor had the initiative to recast the volume to include Don Bradman's obituary - heaps on them as it suggests that ``it is little more than a talking shop, not always the sum of its fractious parts.'' Wisden continues: ``The ICC is impotent to act without the agreement of its member countries with their vested interests.'' Wisden wants ICC to be an independent executive body. ``The ICC's few years as a governing body have not been glorious,'' it adds, deserving an award for understatement. ICC is also criticised for failing to set up a world wide inquiry into Cronjegate.

Wisden could have added that ICC's attitude towards the recent scandalous umpiring in Sri Lanka and elsewhere seems as usual to be one of passive resistance to change.

Three England players are among the Five Cricketers of the Year, still the most prestigious award in the game, since no voting is involved and the choice is one of the editor's primary tasks. Wisden has not named so many Englishmen since 1996 and even now there is a doubt since Andrew Caddick was born in Christchurch, although he has clear qualifications to play for England. His bowling for England this year, when his five for 14 led the way to that extraordinary two-day win against the West Indies at Headingley, has blown hot and cold as usual.

When Caddick is hot he is very, very hot and this winter, even in Pakistan where he claimed only three Test wickets at 94 each, his captain Nasser Hussain would not hear of him being dropped. ``He gives me control, and that is as important as a wicket,'' Hussain was fond of saying.

Caddick is joined by Mark Alleyne, who has captained Gloucestershire to four successive Lord's Cup final victories but who has played for England only at one-day international level and Martin Bicknell, who is about the finest bowler in county cricket and a far superior performer to the learner who toured Australia - and won Dennis Lillee's admiration - in 1990-1. Surrey has been champion on Bickell's back twice in recent years but, by a strange quirk of fate, in the year when Alec Stewart captained England and saw to it that many of his trusted companions from Surrey won caps - and why not? - Bicknell missed out. Now, at 32, his days may be done but he merits this late recognition.

Two stereo-typical Australians Darren Lehmann, the first truly effective Yorkshire overseas professional - despite Sachin Tendulkar's popularity - and Justin Langer, for Test hundreds and county centuries, make up the Five. This is the biggest Wisden in its 138 publications and it will dominate the best seller lists for the next few months.

But, in the wider world of dot.com, the Internet, the ability of computers to change random statistics into meaningful facts in a few seconds, Wisden's place is no longer without challenge and it needs to examine its future almost as carefully as ICC need to look at its structure.

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