Compensation, corruption and contracts

The ICC has decided Pakistan will not be compensated for lost revenue as a result of countries refusing to tour because of security concerns. The Pakistan Cricket Board, feeling it had suffered unfairly from rescheduled tours, had demanded compensation at the recent ICC executive meeting. Instead, it got only sympathy and a loan offer.

Undoubtedly, the PCB, and indeed the ICC, has been afflicted by forces entirely outside its control. First, the September 11 terrorist attacks resulted in tours by New Zealand and West Indies being postponed and relocated respectively; then the explosion outside the New Zealanders' hotel caused their rescheduled tour to be aborted. Now it is all but certain Australia won't tour there for the scheduled commitments in September/October.

But is the ICC really responsible for lost tours? What measures are appropriate? And how can the integrity of the World Test Championship be maintained?

Pakistan is not really owed revenue by the ICC. While it is certainly not the PCB's fault that it has lost money due to events outside its control, it is also beyond the ICC's power to control world events affecting its member nations. The ICC has grown in stature in recent years, but its authority still only extends so far. Just because tours are now mandated by the world championship programme should not make the ICC accountable if they cannot proceed where originally scheduled.

It has been argued that tours have been refused on spurious grounds, and that Pakistan has been willing to play abroad in similarly dangerous circumstances. Pakistan's announcement of its intention to tour Zimbabwe, where Australia conspicuously refused to tour this year on somewhat dubious safety grounds, was cited as an example. This doesn't really bear scrutiny, though, as the Zimbabwe announcement was clearly political and Sri Lanka has been considered safe by every other nation as well.

One has to differentiate between dubious pretences and legitimate safety fears. If it is independently established that it is too risky to tour Pakistan in the immediate future, then so be it. Hopefully it will not be so, but sometimes there will be genuine reasons not to tour.

It is worthwhile remembering here that prior to the advent of the Test championship, it's possible Pakistan would not have been hosting series anywhere when other countries got antsy about touring. With the championship necessitating that matches be played, at least scheduled visitors are compelled to tour neutral venues, so in that sense it is helping to hold playing relations together. Gone are the days when one country could elect to snub another for 20 years for any reason it liked. Except in the case of Pakistan-India, between whom the cessation of playing relations ultimately affects both boards, scheduled series will still be played.

It is unfortunate that a resurgent Pakistan is being denied the opportunity to play in front of its home fans with home advantage. And it is a credit to Waqar Younis's team that under such adverse circumstances it is still performing like a high-quality outfit, able to defeat Australia in last month's ODI series. But there are no reasonable grounds for compensation and for now the best must be made of a bad situation by utilising neutral venues.

An interesting piece of news to come out of the ICC's executive meeting was the admission that were it not for the present deterrents, corruption would still be prevalent.

"If we take our eye off the ball they (match-fixers) will return," president Malcolm Gray warned. This was confirmed by ACU chief Sir Paul Condon, who claimed that former match-fixers are still playing, though he tempered the statement by saying he could count them on one hand.

Even if dormant match-fixers were no longer playing, that's really not good enough, as it still hasn't been sufficiently demonstrated that the circumstances behind corruption have been understood and addressed.

At the moment, there is nothing to say that were it not for preventative measures, some of a new generation of players might also see it as acceptable to fix games. It's nice that the ACU can be confident of the propriety of the sport, but the core of the problem is still a great unknown.

The ACU's ideal, it's ultimate goal, should be for any unprotected, unmonitored player, were he offered money to under-perform or nefariously influence an outcome, to reject the offer out of hand and report the approach. That's perhaps unrealistic, but it should be the objective the ACU strives towards, above the maintenance of deterrents.

To achieve it, though, first requires a deeper understanding of the cancer of corruption.

In negotiating terms for their security and remuneration, India's players might find instructive the achievements of the Australian Cricketers' Association. In 1997 the ACA, the representative body of first-class cricketers in Australia, came to a showdown with the Australian Cricket Board over pay and conditions. At one point, it appeared as though the Australian team might strike during the lucrative ODI series.

It was not until September 1998 that the ACA and ACB came to an agreement, known as the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). According to the ACA's website (http://www.auscricket.com.au/), the MOU dealt chiefly with establishing standard state contracts for all state players and agreement on method of remuneration for all first-class cricketers.

The ACA was established to act as the representative voice of Australian first-class cricketers and to safeguard the rights of those players. It has since benefited Australian cricket by helping to ensure it remains an attractive career path for young athletes, when it might otherwise have lost them to more lucrative sports like Australian football or soccer.

The ACA now boasts 100 per cent membership of Australia's first-class cricketers and its list of achievements includes the creation of player rankings, negotiation of minimum time away from cricket for the players, the joint creation with the ACB of the Allan Border medal night (Australian cricket's annual awards ceremony) and the establishment of a Grievance Tribunal with the ACB.

As was documented on Rediff early last year, the player payment pool for ACB and State-contracted players consists of 25 per cent of Australian cricket's total revenue. ACB-contracted players, in other words the international squad of 25, collect 55 per cent of that, with State-contracted players receiving 45 per cent. The revenue estimate for 2002/'03 according to the last MOU is $A108 million.

The 56-page MOU (http://www.auscricket.com.au/pdfs/mou.pdf) ranges from these contract terms to such punctilious details as how many ACB-contracted players are permitted to engage in chat sessions on the ACA's website per week (2). This kind of agreement is certainly a far cry from the master-slave relationship that once existed between the Board and the players.

None of it is necessarily suitable as a model India should adopt but it does serve as a useful example, which the BCCI was reported to have studied. Interestingly, nowhere in the MOU are financial penalties for lack of performance mentioned, which seems to be the BCCI's own idea.

If all India's first-class players are to be fairly protected and remunerated then, like the ACA, they may first have to fight for their rights with the Board.

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