The human touch

Sadly but inevitably, the world has judged the 2007 World Cup. It wasn't a success. All that can be said to redeem it is that the right four teams contested the semifinals (although neither was a contest) and the right two teams contested the final (although it finished in a farce).

The chief executive officer of the ICC, Malcolm Speed, is a good man. He is honest, very clever and well-intentioned and there is little point in heaping uninformed and emotionally inspired criticism upon him. He is a businesman of rare distinction with a track record in other sports to prove it.

But cricket is not 'other' sports.

Speed had a specific mandate from all of cricket's major 'stake holders' to maximise revenue and when the size of that potential revenue was made a reality, he was told to 'go for it' - or words to that effect in salubrious conference rooms around the world.

Massive amounts of money were siphoned from some enormous global business enteprises and, when things didn't go according to plan, it became imperative to launch a ruthless 'damaqge limitation' exercise. Nothing could be seen to detract from the product for which the major advertisers and sponsors had paid. Not even the murder of a distinguished member of the cricketing fraternity and a former employee of the ICC could be allowed to detract, or distract the world's attention. Such as it was.

The volunteers at the stadiums during the World Cup were, generally, brusque. As much as they smiled, their working brief appeared to be: "Don't do this, you can't do that, you can't come in here..." Just the briefest of social awareness briefings to these largely friendly people could have made all the difference.

But instead of "welcome, your gate, unfortunately, is just around the corner, but it's only a short walk," most fans were greeted with a blank stare and a defiant 'no' when they tried to to enter the stadium. When locals queued innocently with bottles of water in hand, they were rarely told why they could not enter. "You leave that here!" was the standard greeting.

The conclusion, naturally, was that the ICC were determined to filter as much income to their gratuitously over-charged sponsors as possible, so a bottle of water from outside the stadium at R5 cost R20 inside. In fact, the 'official' reason was to limit the possibilities of fans being able to throw full and therefore dangerous water bottles at players. The official suppliers were simply lucky beneficiaries.

But the security was cold, bullish and heartless. Perhaps it needs to be that way, but I doubt it. When I asked officials in Guyana, Grenada and St.Lucia what they were looking for in my laptop bag, they were unable to answer beyond "anything." When I asked whether their retisance was due to 'security', they were dumbstruck. "Just any bad stuff," a man called Elliott said in Basseterre, St.Lucia. It was the same everywhere. Look for bad, suspect bad, never, ever bend the rules and then delight in the indignant furore of the paying spectators.

The overriding atmosphere of negativity which prevaded in the Caribbean may well have come from the ICC, despite Mr Speed's less-documented 'human side.' It may well have come from the men in charge of security, Rory Steyn and Bob Nicholls, who both have a genuinely 'human' side despite the rigours of their job, and it may even have come from the local organising chief, Chris Dehring, who wore spectacularly expensive suits and spoke with equally spectacular greasy charm, but nonetheless it was there. An overwhealming feeling of being duped.

Malcolm Speed has spent the last three years of his reign fighting an impossibly hard battle just to keep the ICC from splitting into it's racial kennels. At the same time he has been expected to make piles and piles of money, something he finds much easier because he is good at it and, well, it doesn't include the pesky and irritating emotions of real people. Hopefully, for cricket's sake, he will succeed. Even more hopefully, however, he will recognise that, as messed up as cricket has become, it is now in even greater need of 'real' people than ever before in it's history.

Real people. The kind of person that Speed has been before in his life and career. Being described as a 'cold fish' before in his life has changed nothing, but now he needs to adopt a fresh approach.

Go back to the family, return to Australia and reflect on a career which has been very successful. Or face the reality that your apparently heartless, soulless and ruthless approach to cricket administration is killing it. In this case, 'tough love' is not 'strong love.'

And finally, Mr Speed, if Lalith Modi and his eccentric gang of cohorts are really intent on breaking the Asian nations away from the ICC, there really is nothing you can do about it. So please concentrate a bit more of your time on doing the right thing rather than the 'right' thing.