DYSFUNCTIONAL SPORTING BODIES

During last winter’s disastrous England Ashes campaign, Ian Lord MacLaurin rang me up to share his frustrations with what he regarded as a hapless and mismanaged tour organised by the very body that he used to run, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). Needless to say, I was in complete agreement with him, as indeed I would suggest was the overwhelming majority of England cricket supporters. “Such a schedule, such lack of preparation, such ill-discipline, both on and off the field, would never have happened under my watch,” he thundered. Spot on there, Your Lordship. When Ian was the boss of the newly formed ECB, he oversaw many far-reaching reforms in the administration of our summer game that led directly to the glorious Ashes win in 2005 and England sitting at the top of the world rankings 2012. The thing is, Lord Mac was not only a very successful businessman but also, he was a cricketer to his bootlaces. How many of the current ECB executive committee are former cricketers? Out of a team of 12, I can only count two, Ebony Rainsford Brent and Ed Smith, who have previous cricket experience. 

Since Lord Mac’s tenure then, it’s been downhill all the way. Results on the field of play have plummeted, reaching rock-bottom by the team’s feckless display Down Under last winter. Mind you, that side – no matter how incompetent were their performances in the middle – were ill-served by their masters back at Lord’s, and I am not referring to the MCC, because the offices for the ECB are also situated at the Home of Cricket. They signed off on an itinerary in Australia that was frankly laughable and had the inevitable consequences that many of us had predicted. The Board’s reaction? “We have learnt some lessons. We need to adapt and evolve.” Lessons? There were no lessons to be learnt. The lessons – about proper preparation – had been taught on countless previous tours. No heads on a plate, you note, no resignations; the core leadership group remained in place. “We’re not going to have any easy sackings like they have in football,” said the CEO, Richard Gould. He should know. His father is Bobby Gould, the much-travelled former footballer and manager.

The closest Ben Stokes got to getting his hands on last winter’s Ashes, one hand only on the trophy in the obligatory press photo before the first Test.

Let’s just take the recent cricket season in this country. The Test series against Pakistan was a damp squib. To be fair, it wasn’t the ECB’s fault that Pakistan cricket, once a powerhouse in the game (oh, my Imrans, my Zaheers, my Wasims, my Waqars, my Miandads, my Qadirs of long ago) is now a pale reflection of past glories. But for all that… Edgbaston was barely half-full and strangely low-key for the final Test of the summer. Why? Fans had become disenchanted with the excesses of Bazball. Pakistan were a shambles. It was halfway through September. The kids were back in school. The match was scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, with the match not expected to last more than three days, thus probably robbing people with jobs the opportunity of watching some cricket over the weekend. And the ticket prices! I have just secured tickets for next year’s Ashes Test in Southampton. They cost £125 each. For the Edgbaston Test they were £100 each. That’s a lot of money if you want to take your children, which of course you couldn’t because the school holidays had ended. 

The Hollies Stand at Edgbaston as you’ve never seen it before during a Test match (against Pakistan in September) – half-empty. 

The England pace quartet of Archer, Robinson, Atkinson, Tongue look settled and a good match for the Aussie batsmen next summer (if they stay fit), but where is our spinner? Any spinner? We haven’t had a decent spinner since Graeme Swann, and he retired in 2013. Is it any wonder when you consider that the directors of our game have relegated the county championship to the margins of the season when the pitches are green and seam rules the roost. The Board’s love affair with The Hundred, shoe-horned into the school holidays of the season, is having a markedly detrimental effect on the national’s team’s development. Next year’s five-Test Ashes series is squeezed into just 44 days. Madness!  

England’s pace quartet – Archer, Tongue, Robinson, Atkinson. But where is the spinner? Any spinner? 

The subject of my next book is John Shepherd, of West Indies, Kent and Gloucestershire. After his recent and highly successful stint as president of his beloved Kent, he was asked to stay on as a member of the club’s cricket committee. He did not stay long. “I was expecting to have my experience as a former player called upon,” he told me, “Not a bit of it. Item 12 might have had something to do with cricket but that was swiftly passed over. All they wanted to talk about was money. Honestly, cricket committees these days can’t bowl a hoop downhill.” I bet most county committees in the country are not much different. Including the ECB. 

Will Carling, England’s captain 1988-96.

In 1995, Will Carling, the England rugby captain, called his employers, the Rugby Football Union (RFU), “57 old farts in blazers.” 48 hours later he was sacked. Following a rebellion by Carling’s team-mates, the RFU were forced to climb down and reappoint him as captain. It seems that not much has changed since 1995. Rugby in England is in a bit of a mess. For the financial year ending in June 2026, the RFU is in the red to the tune of £40 million. How can this be? Twickenham, the largest rugby stadium in the world (capacity 82,000), hosts all home England internationals in the Six Nations Championships as well as three autumn internationals against southern hemisphere nations and all these matches are a sell-out. With tickets starting at £100, that represents a healthy source of revenue. Furthermore, Twickenham hosts a number of high-profile club matches and other representative games, and the ground is always near enough full. The RFU has proposed a £600 million makeover of Twickenham and one of the initiatives is to rename the ground the Allianz Stadium. That has gone down like a lead balloon with fans. To them ‘Twickers’ will always be ‘Twickers”. (When will sporting governors ever learn? Emirates Old Trafford? Kia Oval? And the worst of all, the Utilita Bowl in Southampton? I refuse to call the home of my former club, Hampshire, the Utilita Bowl – it makes it sound like a toilet.) Furthermore, if evidence were needed that the RFU have lost their grip, three clubs, London Irish, Wasps and Worcester, have gone out of business in recent years.

After a drastic England Six Nations campaign last season, a review of the governing body was ordered and its findings put to the vote. It was defeated comprehensively by resistance from the clubs and grassroots, pointing to soaring executive costs, six-figure bonuses for management and a lack of genuine rugby expertise on the senior board. In the same year that the RFU ordered 40 redundancies in their staff, the Executive CEO, Bill Sweeney, pocketed £1.1 million (£742,000 annual salary plus a bonus of £358,000). He has suffered several votes of no-confidence as well as attempts to unseat him, but still he clings to office. Incidentally, his background is not in rugby; he came to the RFU via posts with Shell, Mars, Unilever, British American Tobacco and the British Olympic Association. As a young sportsman, he preferred football to rugby. By contrast, the New Zealand Rugby Board is chaired by David Kirk, a former All Black who captained New Zealand to victory in the 1987 World Cup. Point taken?

“I’m not going anywhere,” announced Bill Sweeney. Well, he clearly is here. 

FIFA! The charge list of their corruption and malfeasance is as long as your arm. Let’s go back not so long ago to the scandals of 2015. The president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, two vice-presidents and 14 other officials were arrested by the FBI and charged with inter alia embezzlement on a mind-boggling scale as well as awarding the World Cup to Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022 in very dodgy deals. What’s happened to them all and the charges they faced? The silence is deafening. Blatter’s successor was hardly a case of cleansing the Augean stables. Gianni Infantino has proved to be every bit as venal and self-serving as his predecessor. The list of his vainglorious initiatives…? Well, where do I start? His use of private jets (including travelling across three continents to watch two matches each day at the recent World Cup). The award of the spurious FIFA Peace Prize to Donald Trump. The exorbitant ticketing pricing for this year’s World Cup. The exclusion and deportation of the Somali referee. The controversial ’hydration breaks’ to afford US television companies more time to show adverts. The reversal of the red card shown to US player Folarin Balogun (at Trump’s suggestion). The ludicrous half-hour for Half Time at the final. The expansion of the 2030 World Cup from 48 competing countries to 64. And the straw that broke the camel’s back (though I doubt Infantino’s back is for breaking)…? The plan, now abandoned, to sell 20% of the commercial and revenue stake of the World Cup to private investors. How that smug, arrogant, autocratic – and fabulously wealthy – man is still in charge of world football is a mystery. 

Gianni Infantino

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” These words are ascribed to Lord Acton, the 19th century historian and politician. Infantino has had absolute power over FIFA for ten years now and it seems likely that he will seek a fourth term of office next March, relying on his client states in Africa and Asia, who benefit hugely from his largesse, to cement his bid. Who knows what further havoc he will visit on the world game. At least football in essence never changes; its raison d’etre is for eleven players to compete with eleven players to stick the ball in the net. Or will it? What other Americanised initiatives might he seek to impose?

The governors of the games of cricket and rugby in this country can stand accused of misguided, even damaging, initiatives and policies, of having taken their eyes – both literally and metaphorically – off the ball, but at least they are not institutionalised corrupt. FIFA is, to its very core. Infantino talks about “the beautiful game” he runs but there is nothing beautiful about the rotten institution over which he presides. Though ‘rule’ might be a better term. He puts me in mind those absolute monarchs, such as Henry VIII or Louis XIV, who had no limits placed on their extravagances and whose every command was fearfully obeyed. Oh, by the way, Infantino’s just been accused of receiving, undisclosed and illegal, a second salary worth millions, on top of the £3.88 millions he gets from FIFA annually. And so it goes on…

Infantino? What a misnomer for a surname. It means ‘little child’. The little child has grown up to be a monster.