Keeping commercial hands out of decisions

Muttiah Muralitharan appeals during the third Afro-Asia match at Durban ... but as the empty stands show, the public wasn't fooled by the ICC according this full ODI status © AFP

On the face of it, the announcement by the ICC that it had drawn up rules for which matches count in the official records and which ones do not should have been welcomed across the cricket-playing world.

Cricket is hard enough to comprehend anyway, but anyone who has ever tried to dig deeper into the myriad of statistics which underpin the game will know that one of the main areas of confusion is when deciphering whether a match is first-class or not.

The situation is further muddled by a rather irritating habit of changing the status of games. The most famous example is the Rest of the World series in England in 1970. They were marketed and sold as Tests, and caps were awarded. And yet three years later, the authorities changed their mind and downgraded them to first-class. The English board even asked the hapless Alan Jones, who won his one 'cap' in the series, to return his England sweater and blazer. He refused.

And what about Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket? Those who watched it or participated would argue that it produced some of the highest standards ever seen outside genuine Tests. But because it irked the authorities, games are not even classified as first-class and do not feature on any player records. Contrast that to usually unedifying matches between various British universities and what amount to county second XIs - they are first-class.

So, well done the ICC. Perhaps.

While clarification is welcome, the news that the ICC will police this raises concerns as it is the one body that should not decide such things. It is - and this is not meant to be a criticism - driven by commercial pressures, and while it certainly wants to do the right thing, the bottom line will always be lurking behind decisions.

Last year, the ICC decided that its unlamented Super Series in Australia would be granted full ODI and Test status. Despite much huffing and puffing that it was not the case, it was clear to all and sundry that the reason for this was that marketing matches without doing so would be much harder. "The decision was brought about by sheer greed that demanded Test status to hook deals involving sponsors and television rights," fumed leading statistician Bill Frindall. The same had occurred a few months earlier with the even more artificial Afro-Asia Cup.

Much good comes out of the new rules, not least an end to the constant attempts by some individuals to reinvent the wheels and reclassify matches from yesteryear. A line had to be drawn at some stage. But what is really needed is an independent body under no commercial pressure to make decisions about matches.

The involvement of the Association of Cricket Statisticians in the drawing up of the new Classification of Official Cricket should also be welcomed, but there are doubts about how much input they have actually had and how much their name is being used to give credibility to the process. The ACS, after all, opposed giving Test and ODI status to Super Series matches less than a year ago.

It has to be hoped that it was a genuine consultation. If the ICC takes its role seriously then this is a much-needed initiative, but one whose success depends on the ICC's commercial jackals being kept on a tight leash.