Vin­ode Mam­chan

In­dia, Aus­tralia and Eng­land are al­ready run­ning world crick­et and with the im­pend­ing vote on the pro­pos­al they have put for­ward com­ing up, it is just a mat­ter of mak­ing it of­fi­cial, Red Steel man­ag­er Col­in Bor­de says.The for­mer West In­dies 'A' team and T&T se­nior team man­ag­er made the com­ment yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to the rec­om­men­da­tion that Test crick­et be changed to a two-tier sys­tem which would put the three heavy­weights in one ma­jor group­ing and the oth­ers teams in an­oth­er.Bor­de said if one looks at the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in world crick­et, it is easy to see that In­dia, Eng­land and Aus­tralia do what­ev­er they want and are al­lowed to be­cause of their fi­nan­cial stand­ing."They are al­ready run­ning crick­et. Any­one fol­low­ing this sport close­ly will re­alise that they get away with any­thing they do and the oth­ers are just there stay­ing qui­et," he said.

There is cur­rent­ly a "work­ing pa­per" on the mat­ter which will go be­fore the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil at their quar­ter­ly meet­ing in Dubai next week. The pro­pos­al is that In­dia, Eng­land and Aus­tralia con­trol the ICC by hav­ing their of­fi­cials take prin­ci­pal po­si­tions and that Test crick­et be played in a two-tier sys­tem.This has sparked heat­ed de­bate across the world, with for­mer play­ers and of­fi­cials voic­ing con­cern that once crick­et is con­trolled by these three coun­tries, it will lead to its death in many re­gions.The well-re­spect­ed Bor­de, who has been very close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with crick­et, said: "If you look at the Fu­ture Tours Pro­gramme (FTP), In­dia, Aus­tralia and Eng­land are al­lowed to change it at will. They don't want to play this one and that one, or not at this time and all this is al­lowed to go on by the cur­rent ICC."I am not bash­ing In­di­an crick­et, be­cause I am ful­ly aware of the con­tri­bu­tion that they have made, but they are al­lowed to get away with not us­ing the DRS (de­ci­sion re­view sys­tem) when they play in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et."

For the pro­pos­al to see a green light, the big three must gain the sup­port of at least four of the oth­er sev­en full mem­bers. The oth­er full mem­bers are the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), Pak­istan Crick­et Board (PCB), Bangladesh Crick­et Board (BCB), Sri Lankan Crick­et (SLC), Crick­et South Africa (CSA), New Zealand Crick­et (NZC) and the Zim­bab­we Crick­et Board (ZCB).

The CSA has al­ready said they are not sup­port­ing it, while the Sri Lankans seem head­ing in their di­rec­tion. It is un­der­stood that the WICB al­so will not sup­port the move, but the oth­ers are un­de­cid­ed."Eng­land just got a 'white­wash' in Aus­tralia and you are telling me that they can­not be de­mot­ed," Bor­de said, re­fer­ring to a part of the pro­pos­al which states that In­dia, Eng­land and Aus­tralia can­not be de­mot­ed from the top-tier flight.

"This is very wrong and the oth­ers must stand up against this. If, for in­stance, the West In­dies play in the sec­ond tier and it takes them a few years to get in­to the top flight, they would go in there broke and then once they are de­mot­ed the cy­cle would con­tin­ue."A lot more in­for­ma­tion needs to come out and the dif­fer­ent boards must make this pub­lic be­cause every­one is a stake­hold­er in this. We don't know if the sec­ond-tier teams would be al­lowed to play in World Cups in or­der to gain rev­enue or not, or whether they would be able to play against any of the big guns in any form of crick­et."This pro­pos­al as it is, from what is re­vealed so far, can­not work for the bet­ter­ment of crick­et and would sure­ly lead to the death of West In­dies crick­et."