Ken Borland

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) are at present pleased with South Africa’s assurances of their players’ safety and it looks like the box for the crucial multi-format tour by Virat Kohli’s men to take on the Proteas still has a tick in it.

CSA director of cricket Graeme Smith told The Citizen on Tuesday that the outlook is “positive” for the Indian tour, which is worth more than $100 million to the financially-constrained organisation, to go ahead, despite the panicky reaction by other countries to the Omicron variant of Covid discovered by South African scientists.

The importance of the tour to South African cricket has been recognised by government and the Ministry of International Relations and Co-Operation issued a statement on Tuesday assuring the BCCI that “a full bio-secure environment” will be established for the tourists as they “take all precautions necessary to ensure the health and safety of the Indian team”.

The BCCI have stated in India that they will be taking a chartered flight to South Africa on December 8 or 9 and CSA chief medical officer Dr Shuaib Manjra confirmed on Tuesday that they have approved the same BSE bubble measures that have been successfully used for other tours to the country.

The Indian government’s only requirement is that the BCCI checks with them before departure that there are no travel advisories in place against going to South Africa.

But it seems they are also keen for the tour to go ahead as the High Commissioner to South Africa is apparently much enamoured by the function to be held in Cape Town on January 2 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of South Africa’s readmission to international cricket, with India being the first country to host them back in 1991/92. It is meant to be a celebration of the strong ties between the two countries.

Manjra said there are “presently no doubts about the tour going ahead”.

The Press Trust of India on Tuesday quoted BCCI treasurer Arun Dhumal as saying: “We are in constant touch with the CSA officials. Whatever best we can do to not compromise the series we will try and do.

“But if the situation aggravates and if it compromises our players’ safety and health, we will have to see. In the end, whatever is the Government of India advisory, we will abide by that,” Dhumal said.

There is no honour amongst thieves, so the saying goes, and it seems there is also no end to the greed and selfishness that characterises international cricket. Little wonder then that even The Big Three are starting to box each other, never mind their deplorable treatment of the rest of the cricketing world.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the associated quarantine protocols have given teams an easy excuse not to fulfill their commitments. England’s disgraceful exit from their tour of South Africa last summer was the first sign that The Big Three would not be beholden to anyone, not even the International Cricket Council, when it came to their board or players doing whatever they wanted.

Australia also refused to come to South Africa when the science actually showed their reasons were totally flawed, and India recently did the dirty on England by pulling out of the last Test of their series on the morning of the game due to a couple of positive Covid tests in their tour party.

Never mind that the Indians were probably to blame because they had been out of the bubble attending coach Ravi Shastri’s book launch and what not.

Poor old Pakistan have the added disadvantage of always having the ‘security risk’ tag hanging over their heads and both New Zealand and England have unilaterally pulled out of tours there. They say it’s because of security threats but they have never informed their hosts exactly what those threats were, and it is telling that Britain’s own High Commission in Islamabad supported their tour going ahead.

And let’s not forget that Pakistan toured England last year, staying in crappy hotel bubbles, at the height of Covid when their hosts were desperate for cricket.

Now even the Ashes are at risk because the English players don’t want strict quarantine rules to apply to them and their families in Australia.

It has all just led to a great diminishing of the image of international cricket. The pre-eminence of country-versus-country contests no longer seems to be in place and the ICC, the very custodians of international cricket, don’t seem overly invested in protecting their turf.

Of course, the Indian Premier League towers over all other cricket like the Drakensberg peaks tower over the surrounding midlands. No player ever pulls out of that tournament and every single recent change to the international schedule has benefited the IPL. If the Indian players had played that last Test against England, some of them would have missed the first game of the resumed tournament in the UAE due to quarantine arrangements. And many of the same players who were terrified of Covid in South Africa quite happily went to India when the pandemic was killing thousands of people every day.

The ICC should be like an Alsatian in being the guardians of international cricket, instead they are a lap dog for The Big Three. The consequences of this will be T20 tournaments continuing to ransack the calendar space and the players that should be available to international competition.

If all this double-crossing and use-and-abuse treatment of the poorer nations is allowed to continue, I can see franchise cricket overwhelming the international game. The ICC will limp along as a toothless body holding world cups every few years.

Lovers of T20 will be delighted as that format will dominate the calendar even more, but traditional cricket fans, especially lovers of the Test game, will be left angry and disinterested.

At the moment, those with the power in cricket all seem to just want to chow down at the banquet table without any consideration for those who produce or serve the feast. It is this greed and selfishness that is destroying the game.

Unless there is a sea-change in mindset and cricket gets some non-selfserving leadership in place, it will be a case of bad luck to the poorer nations as the rich get richer and the rest simply fade away.