Excellent post. I agree with you 100% that Australia should have left the ICC immediately. We (I'm Australian) are in a sporting sense the best cricket playing nation in the world over the past decade, and in addition Cricket Australia runs the most professional and consistent organisation of any in world cricket. Losing Australia would be like losing Brazil from soccer - the ICC would have had no choice but to make a deal or face a mass exodus.

Although not really the focus of your post, the situation in Pakistan is surely one of the major security threats of the next couple of decades - the sooner the west starts to take it very, very seriously the better.

Cricket Australia should withdraw from the ICC, just like all democratic contries should withdraw from the UN..

Actually the ICC could collectively get pissed in Porto.. the President of ICC, Percy Sonn, has quite a reputation on that score!

Good post. Austraila should have quit the ICC. The UK should look at the possibility too.

International cricket existed quite happily before it existed and can continue to do so without it.

Thanks for all that detail Michael. What's most interesting to me is that the ICC is acting like a tool of government policy for some countries, notably South Africa as well as Zimbabwe. The cricket authorities in some places are under pressure to pretend there isn't anything seriously wrong with Zimbabwe, because Mugabe's anti-colonial rhetoric is an effective silencer.

Interested too in the by-the-way remark about West Indies cricket being poorly organised. I'd always seen this as a strength in a region where the governments range from sensible to distinctly flaky. A weak organisation is much less susceptible to takeover by or being a tool for political interests, so that even the less fortunate islands might be insulated by incompetence.

(I'm not sure, generalising the question, whether the "small strong" state beloved of traditional conservatives isn't worse than a big weak one.)

Ho ho ho... I see schism looming.

On the one hand: England, Australia, New Zealand and the West Indies (call it, say, the "Empire" Cricket Board).

On the other hand, the rump countries: Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Zimbabwe (no name, lest I offend the delicate sensibilities of some).

India gets to pick which group it would prefer to play against. (No prizes for guessing which one they'd pick.)

Problem solved.

Too bad it won't happen.

No point for India being the biggest fish in a very small pond though.

Good post, told me things I didn't know which make the various situations regarding international cricket much clearer. I still don't understand the game though :P.
It is a shame that pastimes like cricket are so politicised at this level, such things should be used to bring the world together rather than drive us further apart, it is meant to be fun after all.

Great post. One interesting thing which should shortly surface is how uneasy Mugabe's 'best mates' in South Africa are beginning to feel about their frothing neighbour, what with South Africa currently in overdrive regarding their hosting of the 2010 World Cup. Even the BBC was recently heard to wonder what happens when Pretoria decides to literally pull the plug (South Africa is apparently the sole provider of Zimbabwe's electricity now) and leave Comrade Bob without the power to torture his people opposition by.

But there's a more general point about what the Australian government could do (or indeed any government in such a position) if that government is going to try to be liberal in th eold fashioned sense. Rather than intervene by banning an activity, it is much more consistent with limited government to make certain private contracts unenforceable if they are against public policy. Instead of banning the tour to Zimbabwe, why couldn't the Australian government simply have legislated to make the contractual penalty provisions in the ICC contract unenforceable against Cricket Australia.

Personally, I think that Nation-Based sporting events are silly. We'd be better served as sports fans by merely having international championships amongst the club teams (a la Champions League Football).

why couldn't the Australian government simply have legislated to make the contractual penalty provisions in the ICC contract unenforceable against Cricket Australia.

Two reasons:

1. It is wrong in principle. Rule of Law requires that legislation be not retrospective and that it applies equally to all persons in the same position. Legislation to abrogate a particular contract for political effect is very nearly as bad as banning selected individuals from travelling for political effect.

2. Australia cannot make such a law enforceable extraterritorially, and is unlikely to try; and consequently Australian legislation can't abrogate or amend the agreements made by ICC members among themselves so as to permit Australian Cricket to remain a member of the ICC while exempt from whatever ICC rules suit it.

Great post Michael Jennings (Are you any relation to the South African Cricketer Ray Jennings). You have helped me confirm my thoughts in my previous comment on this topic (different thread) that the Australian Cricket board (or even the players themselves if their board has lost its will) should leave the ICC and shake up world cricket (or world sport for that matter).

World sporting bodies have gone the way of the United Nations where lots of tin pot countries ruled by dictators have the numerical majority in these curious forums to make the rules (or obstruct as they please) over the real economic and sporting powers in the world. In the long run that is bad for the sports because they are inevitably subject to spoiling politics rather than influence being gained on merit and free trade, i.e. where success is rewarded and mediocrity punished by a commensurate loss of influence.

Perhaps world sporting bodies should be set up with the members relative influence determined by their teams rankings. Pulling out of the ICC and setting up a new body, based on where the real power in the game is (ie financial pull or sporting prowess) will be the best for the game itself.

a Propos your comments on the religious divide in pakistani team it was, I am sure, tragic irony for Bob Woolmer because he had to deal with a similar divide in the South African team when he was coach there. It was, I believe, common knowledge that the South African Team at the time had a very religious "wing" with Hansie Cronje, Jonty Rhodes and Shawn Pollock being very fundamentalist christians while the Brian MacMillan faction were their antithesis, generating a lot of friction. Real funny how the very religious are always at the forefront of any skullduggery though.

Ha haha!!! John Howard now becomes the keeper of democracy. A guy who lies regularly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_Overboard_Affair) tries to teach democracy to others. What about his support for the South African regime which was imposing apartheid in the 1980s.