Power and Howards

Sharad Pawar is now ICC president after accumulating experience of 3 years as BCCI chief and 2 years as ICC vice president. And that qualifies him to be the ICC president. If that means an able candidate is not a sure shot conclusion.

That’s the grounds on which BCCI shot down John Howard’s candidature for ICC vice president post.  Addition to India, 5 other boards shot down Howard’s candidature. SL had its own reasons (just cos Howard had termed Murali a chuck, which is true) to block him and so did Zimbabwe (he refused to send Aussie team to Zim and as a result no Aussie team has travelled to Zim for a test series since 1999 and Zim team to Aus since 2003).

Sharad Pawar’s credibility is well known to everybody in India.  Failing crops, farmers suicide in his native state, mismanaged food economy and higher inflation rates for food items besides alleged stakes in failed Pune IPL bid and other IPL entities are some of the blots on his CV.

So Sharad Pawar being an ICC president is not a very enthusiastic piece of news for India, albeit a shameful one.

Malcolm Speed has following insights to offer on how Pawar attended ICC meetings:

“The man who is to be the next ICC president, Sharad Pawar, is the Minister for Agriculture in the Indian government - a serious full-time job, feeding 1.2 billion people. He is a good and fair man but he will be working part-time as ICC president and, take it from me, he knows little about cricket administration. I was present at several ICC board meetings he attended. ICC meetings generally last two days. Pawar attended for one hour and was then replaced by one of the Board of Control for Cricket in India apparatchiks. They were concerned that he was too busy and would be too reasonable.”

Not sure if that’s true or out of malice. But the flip flop of Pawar  clan over the IPL stake issues have put him in a very bad light.  He is confused so as which job to approach full time and part time. Whether serving as federal minister or going as ICC president or serving his own and his family’s vested interests in ventures like IPL.  He is a man chosen to do the job just out of vote bank politics and John Howard was rejected just cos BCCI did not want to upset Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka for its future vote bank politics.  Nobody cares about Pakistan and if the man is quizzed why he opposed Howard, the man would make up a lame issue and then do a u-turn over it.

So if Howard was rejected for ICC post for some reasons, then same reasons and additional ones apply for rejecting Sharad Pawar as ICC president, but that wont happen. For next 2 years the ICC members would need to engage translators and language therapists to understand what Pawar is mumbling in the meetings.

Who knows even his daughter Supriya Sule could attend ICC meetings as his proxy!!!