The reverberations of a World Cup dominated by an all but impeccable Australia could be even more serious than seemed likely when the final overs of the 47-day tournament were bowled in all too appropriate darkness on Saturday evening in Bridgetown. For several years, the subscript of all international cricket has been a series of skirmishes between the Asian countries, led and dominated by India, and the ICC, representing the whole “family” of cricket and attempting with an ever-increasing staff to hold some sort of balance in the affairs of the world game.

In both cases – India and the ICC – commercial concerns have overridden cricketing integrity to a dangerous degree. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was not going to miss its chance yesterday to embarrass Malcolm Speed, the Australian lawyer who retires soon as chief executive. After the call by Lalit Modi, vice-president of the BCCI, to replace Speed with a chief executive from Afro-Asia who “understands the problems of a majority of ICC members”, the honorary secretary of India’s own archaic and frequently hypocritical administration, Niranjan Shah, has criticised the council for becoming “more and more bureaucratic” and costing its members money by “unnecessarily employing so many people”. He refused to rule out a no-confidence motion against Speed’s administration at the next meeting of the chief executives in June.

Certainly the ICC – the administrative arm of the full member countries – has to reconsider its priorities. Speed and Percy Sonn, the South African president of the ICC, need to consider their positions after being jeered by the crowd at the start of a closing ceremony that should have been a joyous celebration of a great event. If four umpires and a referee could not correctly interpret the ICC’s own competition rules, why not just have two umpires, as were once quite sufficient – or two umpires and a third television umpire?

The Indians have a point about the bloated nature of the whole panoply of the ICC. There is too much regulation, too much security, too much commercial big-brotherhood in all the competitions it runs. But at least there is order, honour and sincere motivation at the helm in the person of Speed.

At least, too, the ICC spends a large proportion of its income on developing the game, whereas India still maintains an amateur administration and cannot consistently produce a winning cricket team despite far greater revenue than any other country, approximately £500 million over the next four years.

There must be grave reservations about the motivation of India’s officials. The drive towards commercialising the world game came initially from Jagmohan Dalmiya, of India, and Ehsan Mani, of Pakistan, ICC presidents either side of Malcolm Gray, the Australian. None of them is truly a man with cricket in his soul, which is what the game desperately needs at the moment if it is to set a different course through the buffeting cross-currents of commerce and politics.

The ECB is in no position to lecture anyone, overloading the season at home as it does. Once the West Indies have arrived and gone home in the first part of this summer, England will play a further 22 days of international cricket in 52 days against India. Everyone needs to slow down and rethink.

To a large extent, Speed has only been carrying out policies laid down by Dalmiya and Mani, who both had the commercial nous to exploit television revenue, with the agreement of the ten.

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