South Africa may have been left trailing in the wake of India, Australia and England with the administration and governance of the game following the annexation of cricket’s global revenue stream, but there is still one area of the sport in which they lead – player relations.
The past decade has seen the relationship between the country’s professional players and their employers, Cricket South Africa, strengthen to where few would have imagined possible at the turn of the millennium when interactions were marred by mistrust and conflict.
But the stability and integrity of leadership provided by Graeme Smith as national captain and Tony Irish as chief executive of the South African Cricketers Association gradually changed the landscape to the point where neither body would want to do business without the willing consent of the other.
Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers are among the most widely respected cricketers in the world. Players are not only happy to defer to their judgement, but also happily seek their opinion and advice. The standing and respect enjoyed by Irish recently saw him elected executive chairman of the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations.
Quiet diplomacy
Although Smith remains quietly influential in the background, with De Villiers and Amla concentrating their efforts on playing performance, Irish took his “quiet diplomacy” policy to London this week to tackle the greatest perceived problem facing the players: inaugural International Cricket Council president N?Srinivasan, whose opposition to “player power” has been well voiced for many years.
Nobody in the world game does conflict better than Srinivasan, so it may have been an unexpected disarmer to be confronted with Irish’s approach of dialogue and conciliation.
“It was a positive first meeting and we found considerably more to agree on than many people might have imagined,” Irish told the Mail & Guardian on his return to Cape Town. “At the time of his appointment, Srinivasan asked the cricket world to judge him on what he did going forward in the job, so we are doing that. There are no doubt challenges ahead but this meeting was a positive start.”
It could be that Srinivasan neither looked nor cared for the players’ concerns on his way to redefining the summit of cricketing power. Now that he has reached his new peak, the opportunity to look behind and consider the thoughts of the people who actually play the game and create the billions of dollars over which he presides has perhaps become a good idea.
India’s cricketers were never allowed to form a players’ association while Srinivasan was in charge. He hotly agitated against them having an administrative say, even in playing affairs.
There will be many more sceptics than believers, but South Africa can be proud of the magnanimity and maturity of their players and their player leaders. Watch this space.