The spectre of the rising Sonn

What, exactly, does it mean to "nearly fall out of" your trousers? Perhaps we shouldn't go there, or perhaps we should ask Percy Sonn.

It was Sonn, after all, who was accused of doing just that at a 2003 World Cup match in Paarl. As the president of the United Cricket Board, he was roundly booed by the crowd while viewers all around the world watched the culmination of that event, the prize-giving ceremony that followed the final between Australia and India at the Wanderers in Johannesburg.

The public convinced themselves that - despite Sonn's involvement, not because of it - South Africa had managed to host the most successful World Cup on record. Even as the howls swirled around the stadium and were heard in both hemispheres, Sonn wore a wicked grin as skewed as his tie. He loved playing the scallywag, and South Africans loved having a scally to wag.

Here was someone who stood and delivered what he believed in, and to hell with the rest of you. His language was as robust as his argument, and he drooled in anticipation at the merest hint of a confrontation. His speeches were tenuously connected tangents of incandescent prose that seldom struck more than a glancing blow with the subject matter. He would fire words from the podium like flaming arrows, and care little where they landed or who they wounded. Consequently, even the more jaded reporters would clamour to listen to him.

To say that Sonn shocked the culture of every committee-room he lurched into is like saying that Bradman could bat a bit. This was a steaming, speeding locomotive who enjoyed nothing better than a violent derailment. It is not difficult to see why such a juicy human being would scare the living daylights out of those fragile souls at the International Cricket Council, and at their executive committee meeting in Delhi this week, they were so terrified at the prospect of Sonn's elevation to the presidency, that they preferred instead to move the goalposts.

Sonn, the president of the UCB from 2000 to 2003 and the ICC's vice-president since July 2004, had been due to take over the top job from Ehsan Mani in June this year, but instead Mani's term in office has been extended by a year until June 2006. That implies that the ICC has been bracing itself for a goodly while for that awful moment when Sonn takes over. Such tactics are not unprecedented - in the past, Jagmohan Dalmiya and Malcolm Gray have also been retained for an additional year.

What is more, the rotation system that has been used to ease a succession of vice-presidents into the top job is to be replaced by a more democratic nomination process. Is all this an attempt to keep Sonn away from the presidency? The ICC will deny that with all the predictable bluster and committee-speak for which it has become infamous, but that won't stop the theories from circulating.

Any such whispering campaign would do well to include the fact that Sonn, an experienced Senior Counsel, is no thundering idiot. He is, instead, one of the sharpest legal minds of his generation. He was formerly in partnership with the late Dullar Omar, who rose to become Justice Minister in democratic South Africa, and Sonn himself headed the Scorpions - an elite police unit that serves as South Africa's FBI - and served as the deputy national director of public prosecutions.

Sonn himself became a criminal of sorts in the eyes of South Africa's more conservative cricket followers (oh, who am I kidding - the miserable ranks of sad whites) when he insisted that Justin Ontong replace Jacques Rudolph as the No. 6 batsman in a pre-selected team to play Australia in the Sydney Test of 2001-02.

Sonn's reasoning was that Ontong, who is black, had been included in the squad as a specialist No. 6 whereas the white Rudolph was picked as a No. 3. "I wasn't concerned about Jacques Rudolph, I was concerned about this one chap of colour who wasn't given his opportunity," Sonn said at the time. "Our policy says if the opportunity is there, the young chap must be given his opportunity."

Sonn was correct, of course. But this ember of a debate nonetheless turned into a debate that raged for weeks. Perhaps the ICC's tweedy suits, terminally rooted in their aversion to forthrightness and men of action, are right to cower like a coven of ageing vampires at the spectre of the rising Sonn.

Be afraid, old farts, very afraid.