Striking out
Men in white play cricket, men in suits run it but the balance of power is beginning to shift. Paul Kelso examines the increasing influence the players are having on the world game
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The vehicle for their discontent remains an obscure body. Tour a county ground or an antipodean suburban oval and few deck-chair followers of the game would know what FICA stands for. The ICC knows it well. The Federation of International Cricketers' Associations, a coalition of national players' unions, represents a storm cloud on the not so distant horizon.
Under the shrewd stewardship of the former Australian offspinner Tim May, FICA has become a force in the game. Seven of the 10 Test-playing nations have player associations affiliated to it and May expects the remaining three - Pakistan, Sri Lanka and crucially India - to have signed up if not by the start of the Champions Trophy in October then soon after.
It is already a powerful irritant to the game's rulers and in the next decade no organisation is likely to have more influence on the way cricket develops.
Increasingly professional, self-sufficient through sponsorship deals and with a mandate from the established players, FICA is in a position to flex its increased muscle on a range of issues from scheduling to commercial contracts via anti-doping policy - and seldom has it had more need. In the last five years there have been a number of player-board conflicts at domestic and international level, nearly all related to money.
The 2003 Cricket World Cup saw Indian and Sri Lankan players rebelling over attempts to curtail personal sponsorship interests that conflicted with official ICC sponsors; and last year West Indies' selectors dropped leading players over the same issue. Now FICA is in dispute with the ICC over insurance for players at the Champions Trophy. In a show of solidarity the established unions in England and Australia, who insure their players separately, have rejected the player terms until they include insurance for all participants.
The increasing tension bubbled up in March when May and the ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed indulged in public posturing after the players took exception to what amounted to a lecture on conduct from the ICC. May suggested the ICC code extend to administrators. The pair have form: May led the Australian players' union in 1997 when it rebelled against Cricket Australia, then led by Speed, though their working relationship is said to be constructive.
It may not remain so should the single most divisive issue in the game, the volume of cricket, live up to its explosive potential. In April ICC published its Future Tours Programme (FTP), a six-year schedule it believes will impose structure on the international calendar, satisfy broadcasters, fill the coffers of domestic boards and ease fears over burn-out. Speed heralded it as the solution. May's view could not be more different.
They are exhausted and they are not going to take much more
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The threat is explicit: "The militancy of the players depends on the issue but, if there is anything that will force the players to take the ultimate step of industrial action, it's the Future Tours Programme. I'm not saying it is about to happen but all the ICC has delivered is a minimum guideline for the amount of cricket. There is nothing to stop individual boards arranging extra series on top of that in the FTP. We understand its already happening. It is a mess."
May's warnings about the possible fall-out from what he calls the "play-travel-play-travelplay- fall over" schedule are equally stark. "You only have to look at the doping record in baseball to see that recovery, not enhanced power, is the motivation for most drug misuse. The more we push our players the more they might look at options."
His prognosis of the game's immediate future may seem unduly dark at a time when players have never earned more and the ICC is about to start negotiating their next global TV deal, a contract that could top £400m for four years. Speed calls on players to realise they are better paid and supported than ever before, particularly in Australia where the loudest protests have emerged just as the players embark on a five-month break. "Players have to recognise it is a two-way street," he says. But he is under no illusions that the players' commercial potential lends FICA power.
The ICC and FICA agree that responsibility for curtailing the surfeit of games lies with individual boards - ICC regulations require only two Tests and three ODIs to constitute a series - but, if boards do not listen to the players - and recognition of unions is still a moot point in several countries - then ICC tournaments will suffer. May says players, obliged to play in matches endorsed by national boards, will miss ICC events they are not contracted to play to cut down the workload.
A player strike at a World Cup remains unlikely but, should the threats become reality, the lesser events in the ICC's ambitious four-year cycle - Champions Trophies twice a year separated by ODI and Twenty20 World Cups - will lose their lustre. The real power remains with the boards whose competing interests ICC is paid to juggle. The players are the only constituency with the power to take them on and all administrators will increasingly have to take their concerns into account. How much goodwill the two sides are willing to sacrifice among spectators and viewers who pay their wages remains to be seen.
Paul Kelso is a sports reporter for The Guardian
This article was first published in the July issue of The Wisden Cricketer.
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