'Why would you do a Kerry Packer?'
Cricket Australia chairman Wally Edwards knows the value of keeping India happy. He talks about their recent negotiations, the ICC's future, and wanting more teams to be competitive
When did I start thinking about it? It was handed down at my second meeting, and I'd already started talking to Srini [N Srinivasan, BCCI president] about what he thought about life before that. That was one of my primary aims when I became chairman, to try to find out from Srini and others what they thought about the ICC, where it was at and how we could improve it. There was a lot of complaint about it - I didn't understand it until I got there and spent 6-12 months talking to people.
Debate was non-existent really - what I could call normal debate about subjects. There was a very unhappy India in the room, very unhappy with pretty well everything that was happening, and it was very disheartening. You'd leave a board meeting and think, "Well, what a waste of time that was." To me, it wasn't the way you should run an organisation.
I can't remember where it came from, to be honest. Certainly we talked a lot about the idea of how the United Nations works, with a few nations leading the organisation a little more, a la the UN Security Council, but it was fairly obvious that if we, the three bigger nations, didn't take a bigger leadership role, no one was going to. It was a matter of putting your hand up and saying, "Look, let's see how we can make this place better." The last thing Australia would want is a takeover of the ICC. That whole concept's ridiculous. We don't need that. We want to see ICC a very productive and good organisation for world cricket, and that's all I'm trying to do.
Everything depends on that. Whether it's me or South Africa or anybody. A lot depends on personal relationships in this world, and cricket is one of those businesses. Country-to-country relationships are very important and one of the roles as chairman of Cricket Australia is to try and cultivate that with every nation. That's what I've been trying to do since I took on the job.
I think it will. I assume that when we appoint our next [CA] chairman, he'll be a capable person who understands what we're doing and is fully informed about what I've been trying to do, and will continue to do the work. He'll probably do it in a different way, he or she, or with different approaches, but fundamentally I will expect they'll know what we're trying to do and that's to have a good ICC that puts on good events.
As I understand, they're going well. They've signed an FTP for the next eight years with India, and everything's moving forward now in a positive light. I'm pleased with that.
We've had lots of talks about that, and that was a real possibility before we came to all these agreements. There was a very real chance that India would have gone on an IPL voyage and left world cricket behind. That was said more than once. If that had happened, you were looking down the barrel of a Kerry Packer moment. It would have been easy to say, "They aren't going to do it, they want to play in World Cups", but that was a reality.
"Why would you risk turning the IPL into a travelling circus that would take all our good cricketers 12 months of the year and leave us with second-rate international cricket?"
We don't have an ExCo now but we needed one, because we have two boards. ICC and IDI [ICC Development International], and these boards vote as ten full nations and three Associates on each board. The IDI is where all the money comes in, the raising of money and how it's spent. But ICC sits over there with no such committee working with them. [We thought that] to run the place better we should probably have another committee there. It doesn't mean anything other than it's a sub-committee of the board. They can go away and sort things out on behalf of the board, the board then in the end has to approve it. So there's no entrenched power at all, because the board can overrule anything.
Well, what's different? If India want something around the board table right now they usually get it, because they have got enough nations that say, "I'm not going to rub India up the wrong way or they might not come and visit me", and that's reality. India are strong and we've got to recognise that. But what we want them to do is be part of the decision-making process and be in the ICC rather than just turning up and being aggressive, angry and unhappy. That's where they are, they are unhappy.
Well, why would you? If you can find a progressive way to improve the place, why would you take that chance, why would you do a Kerry Packer, where the Australian board just said "b***** off" with the deal? Why would you risk turning the IPL into a travelling circus that would take all our good cricketers 12 months of the year and leave us with second-rate international cricket? It's not a pretty thought. But it's possible, and they know that. Maybe in the end it will still happen one day, but I don't think it will happen in the next eight years.
It's possible. And it makes some sense. We've got independent people on the finance and audit committee now. It's possible, but at this point in time it's not likely to happen because it's one of the grizzles from all the other countries, "We want to be on it, we want to be part of the four, five." But certainly in the short term it will be all Full Member people on those committees.
Completely different. For one, Australia is a lot more contained. We go to the ICC four times a year, you're there for two or three days and that's it. You don't do a lot of talking unless there are big issues. We've done a lot in the last 12 months, but you don't do a lot more talking outside that and that's a problem. It won't be too bad if we can get it to run a little better, a little tighter, make the money go further, get meritocracy.
I won't be there for two years. CA will take that chair for the two years. And that's purely to settle things down, to get things to work better. I'm working on a new code of ethics at the moment. We're going to put on an ICC World Cup in Australia in 2015, and maybe that can be done better than it has been and more efficiently.
By the various committees. We've got to start on how the rankings might work better, how the bottom end in all forms - T20, World Cup cricket and Test cricket - will work. How you move up and down and who you play, and how much money you get.
That's one bit of detail we are not sure about yet and needs more talk. They'd obviously love to stay there and be called a Test match-playing country and play Tests and keep losing. But it's not good for Test cricket in that case. But I've got respect for them.
No longer exempt. I didn't want that in the first place, but it was put in there because of the broadcasters. Australia get reasonable TV rights but we don't pull the big money. We're about equal with Pakistan, a bit more than South Africa and the USA, that's where we rank.
I've got no idea, but I know that Perth rates substantially higher in the evening, like Boxing Day rates. So obviously there's more people watching in the evening when they're at home. That's the common-sense approach. I still think there's a long way to go to prove it's a good concept. It's all to do with people being able to come to the ground and watch and also sit at home and watch. If you're at work it's not as easy.
That's still a debatable point. I'm not a great believer in it, but I'm only one person and I wouldn't impose my will to that degree. I think it's worth trying. You should trial it fairly rigorously, though, before you start playing Test cricket. But potentially it fills grounds up. If they can come at 2 or 3 o'clock and go through until 9 o'clock. There's still sunshine in some places. But even though we could, we don't do that in Perth now. I can't work it out. We start too early in Perth. We could start later in Perth and Sydney as well, but no one wants to. This is one of the Catch-22s we face. We could extend it by an hour, but it seems we need to extend it by two hours.
Daniel Brettig is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here