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March 12, 1998

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The Cricket Interview/Mike Coward

"India, Australia are at the head of a new world order"

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Haresh Pandya

He is rated, universally, as one of the world's best cricket writers. And for close to a decade and a half, Michael John Coward, born in Adelaide on August 2, 1946, has held pole position as the most respected of Australian scribes, perhaps the one who is held in the sort of universal esteem that once was the due of the late Ray Robinson.

The bearded Aussie has endeared himself to connoisseurs of exquisite cricket prose the world over. Courage of conviction, forthright views and a very smooth style are some of the salient features of Coward's cricket writing. A regular columnist with prestigious international publications including Wisden, he also has three outstanding cricket books to his credit.

What's more, Coward is a successful commentator as well -- a rare combination that. What is evident in his prose is that he sees the game with the eye of an artist, and talks, or writes, of it with passion.

Coward, besides, wears his Australian heart unabashedly on his sleeve. And makes no secret of the fact that his first concern is for Australian cricket. Thus, he was one of very few journalists who, rather than sit on the fence, came right out and supported Australian's decision in not going to Sri Lanka to play a league match of the 1996 Wills World Cup.

"Over many years, I had reservations about the attitude of the Australians to playing in these parts of the world," he says, in explanation. "There is no doubt that at times, they didn't conduct themselves as they should have thanks to this paranoia about playing in these parts of the world. But I think this time it was a reasonable decision, and not only because of the bomb blast in Colombo at the time. That blast was mainly one symptom of a wider disease.

"Unstability in the sub continent, as far as Australian cricket is concerned, has been going on since the end of 1994, with the Salim Malik controversy in Pakistan. And that was an interesting thing -- initially, the Australians didn't feel uneasy about playing in Pakistan. It was Sri Lanka that became the focus. Of course, there was a lot of tension in Australia during the last season, not so much with the players but with the dramas of ball-tampering, Muttiah Murlitharan, the death threats to the Australian players particularly Craig McDermott... and it all came to a head, it all became a bit too much...

"I think we are tending to look at the issue just in terms of the bomb explosion in Colombo. But I think you've got to consider other things as well. And the combined effect made it very difficult for the Australians to go to Sri Lanka."

But Australia did go to Pakistan to play in the final against Sri Lanka at Lahore. Wasn't that a kind of compromise, given all the bribery allegations leveled against Salim Malik by Shane Warne, Mark Waugh and Tim May?

"No, it wasn't like that, really," he says. "You have to look at Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India very separately. People in these countries are used to living in a society that can be unstable -- from civil disobedience or political violence or whatever. Australia is a very small country with no civil disobedience. It's a small, multi-culture environment. The countries which were most critical of Australia's stand were the ones that are most used to living with instability in their own society. And Australia doesn't have an unstable society; it doesn't have civil disobedience or violence. And when suddenly the team is confronted with that kind of situation, the players feel very uncomfortable. But again I say it wasn't only the bomb blast that prevented the Australian team from going to Colombo. It was the threat to the players, the uneasiness through the summer in that season of dramas. I mean it was a combination of events."

Coward has interesting observations to make about the last two editions of the World Cupt. "It's interesting that the pattern seems to be for more than one country to host the event. India and Pakistan in 1987; Australia and New Zealand in 1992; India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 1996. Perhaps in future the West Indies -- all the islands that comprise the West Indies -- will host the event together. The 1987 World Cup was a spectacular for two reasons. One, of course, was that it was first time it was played away from England. And that was important. I am a great believer that a new cricket world is emerging, that there is a new order in the cricket world.

"India is a very powerful player in the new cricketing order, as is Australia. And I think you can argue that there is an Asian cricket bastion or an Asia Pacific cricket bastion, developing, with India and Australia being the power players in the new order. Certainly, India has got the greatest money, greatest population and the greatest resources to pull on. Australia has got a lot of expertise, particularly in the marketing and developing and the promotion of the game. It's significant that the last three World Cups have been held in what I call the Asia Pacific area, reflecting this emerging new order."

Coward makes no secret of his anger at the way recent bribery scandals have been handled. "The International Cricket Council has been disgracefully weak in handling the issue. The ICC has a responsibility to the welfare of the game, and the welfare of the players. In both instances, it failed -- failed the game, failed the players. Now, no one really knows exactly what has happened, other than of course the players concerned. And the disappointing thing was that the ICC didn't order an independent hearing to be held in an independent environment. And the ICC is based in London, the hearing should have been held there to take away the sense of bias which could have been evident had it been held in either Pakistan, or Australia."

So does he agree with the verdict as it stands? "I think the Pakistani judge reached the right conclusion, because there wasn't enough evidence put forward to take any other decision on. Keeping in mind that not once has any charge been laid against Salim Malik, neither by the cricket authorities nor by the civil authorities -- he has instead been defamed, ridiculed and mocked all round the world, and yet he has never been charged. And that is a very distressing thing. The ICC in fact not only failed to protect Warne, Waugh and May, but it has also failed to look after Salim Malik's interests. That, to my mind, was the saddest thing of the summer of 1995-96. The ICC in fact has lost a lot of respect in the eye of the cricket world for being so weak on such an important issue."

Coward's disenchatment in fact extends to all aspects of the ICC's functioning. "The ICC claims they haven't got enough powers, it says they did not act in the Salim Malik affair because they didn't have enough powers to act. But I believe they could have acted on the Salim Malik issue under the code of behaviour - which is about fair and unfair play and bringing the game into disrepute. If they don't have the powers, then they should have got all associations around the world to give them the power.

"In any case, the ICC has been slow to act not just on this issue, but on pretty much every single major issue of recent times. "They were slow to act on the ball-tampering issue, they were slow to act on the Muttiah Murlitharan chucking controversy. The ICC says it has been active in the throwing controversy for some time now -- but if so, the public is totally unaware of it. And this inactivity came at a time when, under then chairman Clybe Walcott and chief executive David Richards, it was trying to give the body an image, and a credibility, it never had before."

Coward has a lot to say about the recent spate of scandals in the cricket world. "It's a very tumultuous world we live in. John Arlott always said that you could never see cricket, or any sport, in isolation from the wider society. Cricket reflects what's happening in society, all sports do. And if in society you have questions of racism, questions of elitism, questions of drug-use whether of the performance enhancing or social variety... all these things happen in our wider society, and therefore will inevitably be reflected in the sporting community -- which of course includes the cricket community, too.

"Cricket has had a very clean image, when compared to most other sports, over the years. But certainly, over the last few years, there have been some distressing moments. I think it's an appropriate time for the ICC to show that it has courage and guts and can represent the game which has such a rich history; represent the players a lot more strongly."

Coward's view is that the time has come for the international body to develop into a strong, proactive organisation that can control the development of the game. "I think in many ways, the speed of the game has overtaken the administration. Certainly that's the case in Australia, where some very good operators exist. But I am critical, often, of the board of directors that run Australian cricket. They are servants of the game because they have served the game for a long time, they are not there necessarily because of their competence or their brilliance. The game is moving so quickly that there is a need, probably, to restructure the administration right around the world. I think that is probably the single biggest issue -- which in turn leads to the number of other issues that hang over the game, brooding. The game today is in limbo.

"The game began changing since the Packer era and World Series cricket, that in fact was the catalyst for change, and that was 20 years ago. Looking back, it is hard to imagine just how much the game has changed between then and now. Just look at what has happened in terms of India in the last ten years, in terms of the two World Cups, to a comparative study between 1987 and 1996. It's mind boggling. And you know what, I think there will be more, and faster, change over the next five, ten years. We have to have a mentality, and an administration that can cope with those extreme changes."

'It is of great concern that India plays little Test cricket'

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