The Age
By Jesse Hogan and Matt Wade
July 2, 2010
THE just-retired president of the International Cricket Council has lamented its rejection of John Howard as his successor, predicting it will trigger the scrapping of the board’s rotational leadership policy.
Just over a month ago, Welshman David Morgan and the man who has now replaced him, serving Indian politician Sharad Pawar, jointly urged the 10 voting members to honour the rotation policy, with Mr Pawar predicting their call would be ”unanimously supported”.
”Once he [Mr Pawar] had committed not only to support the process but support the candidature of Mr Howard, I felt fairly confident,” Mr Morgan told The Age.
”It’s a matter of acute disappointment to me that I was unable to persuade the board to support the nomination of Mr Howard. I think he would have been a very fine vice-president and indeed president.”
The Indian media speculated that Mr Howard’s poor reputation on race-related issues was a factor and had been raised in meetings by the Indian board, but did not give examples.
Australia and New Zealand have been given until the end of August to submit a new nominee, although this has been complicated by Mr Howard’s refusal to withdraw.
”I’m not the quitting type,” Mr Howard said last night on his return from the ICC meeting. He again criticised the process, saying his nomination should have been approved ”absent of the discovery of some non-existent criminal record on my part”.
But Mr Howard’s suggestion that his criticism of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s regime could have been a factor in his snubbing was strongly rejected by Zimbabwe Cricket chairman Peter Chingoka.
Mr Chingoka told The Age suggestions of political interference were ”lies” and had been ruled out by Sports Minister David Coltart when Mr Howard and Cricket Australia chairman Jack Clarke visited Harare on a lobbying visit last week.
”Before he [Coltart] left our meeting he was very clear. He told us he had been to a cabinet meeting earlier and that he had mentioned Mr Howard’s visit to Harare to our president, Robert Mugabe, and that Robert Mugabe said that this was a cricket matter which had to be dealt with by cricket people.”
He also rejected the notion that Zimbabwe and other ICC nations were bound to back Mr Howard’s nomination. ”It is not a rubber stamp,” he said.
Despite his disappointment, Mr Howard struck a philosophical note: ”In the end what matters is the success of the greatest game mankind’s ever known.”