Live Scores SMS for Free
|
||||||
What's Hot
- Editorial
- Controversies
- Rumours
Search Cricket360 Here!
Recent Series Archive
| The ECB Going from One Crisis to Another |
|
|
| Pitched By Cricket360 Editor | |||||||
| Thursday, 26 February 2009 | |||||||
|
The beleaguered England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and its controversial Chairman Giles Clarke have tumbled from one to the next controversial cricket crisis if you look at the cricket news from the past 18 months or so. International cricket itself has gone through some turbulent times and the EBC has seen more turbulence than most. The Zimbabwe Tour There was a Zimbabwe tour planned and it took the combined efforts of the Prime Minister Gordon Brown and ECB’s Clarke to cancel this tour which would have been a major political and cricketing embarrassment for English cricket. Clarke was also able to ‘convince’ the Zimbabweans to withdraw form the World Twenty20, to be held in Britain in June. The IPL The ECB, long being in dissonance with the powerful BCCI was holding out against the power of the Indian Premier League. The ECB had plans of a rival English Premier League to be held in Dubai which have not yet materialised. In this matter the ECB was forced to concede and had to make adjustments to that the English players could play the IPL, against which they held out for a long time. The English Tour of India The Mumbai terror attacks and their timing meant that decisive action for the safety and the security of the English players had to be taken by the ECB. In this case a happy compromise was reached by the ECB and the BCCI wherein the English team went home without completing the full complement of 7 ODIs (having played and lost 5 in succession), but thereafter came back and completed the commitment for 2 test matches. This allowed both the ECB and the BCCI to save face and honour their respective commitments. The Peter Moores-Kevin Pietersen Imbroglio The sacking of Coach Peter Moores at the behest of Pietersen and then sacking Pietersen for his assertion of power was the response of the ECB which sought to address the power balance in English cricket. ‘Player power’ was seen as undermining the authority of the ECB and its office bearers which was hugely resented. One ECB member said that it was the "the biggest single danger facing the game" and that "if it becomes like football, with all the money going to the players, there will be nothing going down to the grassroots of the game". Whether sacking Pietersen was good for the team and for English cricket is of course not a question so easily answered when you look at the England team’s performance in the West Indies. The Stanford Scandal This one has clearly put the ECB in an untenable position; it is firmly on the backfoot with this one. It was seen has having ‘given in’ to a vulgar fraudster and putting English cricket in an embarrassing, even shameful position owing to their association with Stanford. There is much baying for blood on this one and many are calling for the sacking/resigning of Clarke and the ECB's chief executive, David Collier. Sky and Free to air TV This is seen as one of the coups of the ECB supported by the board of most counties. The deal ECB made with Sky sports in 2004 and which is now extended to 2013, ensured that there were no England matches from free-to-air TV. The English game benefited to the tune of £220m as a consequence and this is seen as one Clarke’s biggest sources of support from within English cricket.
3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."Newer news items:
Older news items:
|
|||||||
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
