Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: Tomorrow’s Protest at The Oval

There are two things we need to discuss before tomorrow’s final test. Firstly, and most importantly, there’s the protest against the Big Three stitch up outside The Oval at 10am. The organisers are planning a three minute silence – one minute for each of the counties responsible for arguably the ‘biggest scandal in sport’. Secondly there’s the big selection dilemma: should Adil Rashid play?

Forgive me but I’m going to discuss the politics first. I’ll talk about team selection in a separate article. I cannot stress how important it is for you to attend the protest in person (if possible), or alternatively spread the news and support it on social media.

I’m guessing that the main broadcasters, particularly Sky, will do their level best to ignore it completely, so it’s up to us ordinary cricket lovers to make our feelings known. Hopefully, other media outlets unconnected with cricket will cover the protest if it’s a success.

There have been some attempts to criticise Death of A Gentleman, which discusses the lack of accountable and transparent governance at the ICC, so we need to make sure its message resonates.

For example, when the filmmakers Jarrod Kimber and Sam Collins appeared on TMS on day one at Trent Bridge, Ed Smith initially tried to criticise the film somewhat before backtracking a little – perhaps because he heard the words coming out of his mouth and realised how strange they sounded.

At one point Ed seemed to argue that because football was growing as a global sport, and FIFA is apparently corrupt, that it didn’t really matter if the ICC was corrupt too. The question he posed – “do administrators really matter?” – seemed a tad curious to say the least.

To answer your question Ed, yes they do matter. If the supreme court of India can’t trust Srinivasan to run the BCCI, I don’t see why cricket lovers should trust him to run world cricket. And what about the moral dimension? You can’t ignore that.

What’s more, world cricket isn’t expanding anyway. There’s some attempt to get more countries playing T20, but restricting funding to affiliate nations and giving more money to the Big Three isn’t exactly a recipe for growth, is it. The World T20 is expanding but funding (in relative terms) and the main World Cup (the 50 over one) are contracting.

Sunday’s Cricket Writers on TV programme also revealed a mixture of misinformation and apathy from one of the cricket journalism’s elder statesmen. When Lawrence Booth articulated the film’s message, Mike Selvey seemed a tad disinterested.

Rather than stressing the film’s importance, Selvey seemed skeptical. Instead of focusing on the inequitable distribution of wealth in the game, or expressing concern for the future of test cricket, Selvey argued it would be difficult to establish the kind of independent and transparent governance most sensible cricket lovers want.

Was Selvey concerned that complex cricket politics, or Indian money, might prevent the emergence of a more democratic and accountable ICC? Curiously no. Instead he simply argued it would be difficult to find people willing to govern the game for the greater good.

In my opinion, this comment reveal just how apathetic (or perhaps ignorant) some prominent pundits are when it comes to the key issues facing our game. As Booth pointed out, plenty of ex-players already sit on various committees and make recommendations. Finding people who care about the game, and want to serve it, would be cinch.

I get the impression that a lot of people who should be holding cricket’s authorities to account, in the same way that political journalists hold policymakers to account, have absolutely no interest in anything other than on-field action. It may surprise you to learn that the Guardian received news of the Big Three power-grab before any other paper but decided to sit on the story. It’s apathy like this which has led to the current predicament.

There are obviously exceptions to this rule – and generally speaking the younger generation of cricket writers are much more forensic in their analysis of cricket politics – but us supporters need to compensate for the failure of others to do their jobs.

Perhaps they feel they can’t criticise too much, for fear of losing certain press privileges. Anyone who has seen Death of a Gentleman knows that Jarrod Kimber’s press pass was mysteriously revoked during the making of the film. If that’s the case, then I have some sympathy, but please don’t insult our intelligence by giving inane and erroneous reasons why the film’s message is flawed or unrealistic.

Consequently, it’s extremely important that we all get behind the protest tomorrow (Thursday). It takes place at the Hobbs Gate outside The Oval at 10am (an hour before play starts). You can find out more information at www.changecricket.com. There’s also a petition to sign. The organisers are encouraging people to wear the strips / colours of all cricketing nations except the big three.

You can also help by using the hashtag #changecricket on Twitter, and sharing articles about Death of a Gentleman @DOAGfilm. We wrote our own review of Death of a Gentleman here. There’s also a good article on the film and tomorrow’s protest by The Leg Glance on Being Outside Cricket.

You can hear our interview with Jarrod Kimber, which goes into a lot more detail about the film, the media and the importance of cricket blogs and their communities, here.

It’s all very well to characterise people who want to change things as naive idealists, so I’ll simply put it like this: either you’re happy that world cricket is being run by people who make deals behind closed doors, and who serve their own private interests rather than the best interests of sport itself (people who have been censured by the courts), or you’re not.

And if you’re not, then what are you going to do about it: nothing or something? If it’s the former, then I politely suggest that you’d don’t love cricket as much as you think you do.

So come on everyone. This is a great chance to make the feelings of ordinary cricket fans heard. Paul Burham of the Barmy Army will be attending, as will Jamie Fuller and Damian Collins MP, who were involved in the investigations at FIFA.

We’ve written a lot of articles over the last two years which discuss the ECB’s behaviour and their attitude to supporters. Whether you agree with the big decisions made or not, nobody can dispute that they’ve handled things appallingly. Even England’s new MD, Andrew Strauss, has criticised the way that certain things have been handled.

Ask yourself why they behaved like they did? What made them think they could get away with it? What made them think they could screw the rest of the world without so much as a raised eyebrow?

It’s because the people who govern cricket are not transparent. They are aloof. They come across as arrogant. They do what they bloody well please. Everyone else can go to hell as long as their individual boards are making money.

They do not want us to question their decisions. They don’t seem to care what we think – or believe we deserve to be kept in the loop. As Gideon Haigh says in Death of a Gentleman, we’re just there to buy tickets and pay our satellite subscriptions.

The ECB and the ICC seem to think that cricket belongs to them. But they’re wrong. The game belongs to everyone … and not just cricket lovers and cricketers from England, Australia and India either.

James Morgan

@DoctorCopy