Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), guardian of the laws of the game, has to become more relevant again and play a global ambassadorial role, feels its current president Mark Nicholas who reckons India has made a remarkable contribution towards cricket.
“Well, I think it (MCC) needs to be more important again. There is a need for some global relevance, not a power grab, not at all,” Nicholas was quoted as saying by The Hindu.
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Nicholas feels plenty of people end up focusing on India’s vast riches from the game but it’s also a fact that it’s them who are setting up everyone else as well.
“And what India has done for cricket is remarkable, too many people question it because they like zoning in on the fact that India makes all the money, but India makes all the play,” Nicholas said.
“You know, India is the country that sets everybody else up. So, I have no problem with that,” he added.
It’s also true that India, England and Australia take the lion’s share of revenue from the ICC but Nicholas says it’s the job of the cricket’s global governing body to make sure of its better distribution.
“What I do think is that the game could receive more pastoral care. And the ICC could make a better thought of sharing its annual income. The MCC can have a global ambassadorial role. It can connect people. It can maybe bring the game together,” Nicholas said.
The future of Test cricket became the major talking point after South Africa named a vastly depleted squad for the New Zealand tour next month with all of their first-choice players taking part in SA20 – a franchise-based T20 competition.
Nicholas feels that the stakeholders will have to zero in on a window in which to play Tests to prevent the global cricket calendar to be completely overtaken by franchise tournaments.
“I think Test cricket is going to have to find windows. As the franchise tournaments continue to almost kidnap the game, in a way, and then demand ransoms, probably the best thing everybody can do is find a couple of windows a year, maybe Christmas and New Year into January and June and July, maybe July and August, where you play Test match cricket,” he said.
“Test cricket is very important because the skills that you develop to be a Test player are the skills that make you an attractive short-form player. So if every short-form player is only developed on batsmen clearing their left side and being able to score 360, and bowlers having a variety of balls to contain batsmen that includes yorkers and into-the-pitch slower balls, the great skills of the game, the cover-drive and the out-swinger and the in-swinger and the back-cut… all those things will be compromised over time,” he added.
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