Cricket faces crisis

Press, 27 June 1987, Page 84

Cricket faces crisis

NZPA-AAP London The gentleman’s sport of cricket faced another crisis yesterday when England, New Zealand and Australia faced the West Indies, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka on the vexed question of sporting links with South Africa. The outcome of the International Cricket Conference meeting at Lord’s was anything but certain — a diplomatic adjournment of debate at best, chaos for the World Cup in India and Pakistan, or, at worst, fragmentation of the game along black and white racial lines. No-one was even sure of the voting procedure on the West Indies motion that any cricketer who has sporting links with South Africa should be

banned. If the proposition is regarded as a rule change, I.C.C. founding members, Australia and England, would have to support it, but both have said they will hot. If it is viewed as a “recommendation,” either England or Australia would have to support it to give it life. And if a straight major-ity-rule vote is deemed' appropriate, the non-white countries would carry the day — and immediately run into legal problems in the wider world outside the I.C.C. The Cricketers’ Association, which represents individual players, has already warned of the possibility of calling its members out on strike if their

ability to earn a living out of season is curtailed. And English members of the association have been advised that they could take out writs in the High Court for “restraint of trade.” The “independent” newspaper’s cricket correspondent writes: “Short, of putting on a Morris dance in a minefield, it is difficult to imagine anything more potentially explosive than the I.C.C. meeting at Lord’s.” The “Daily Telegraph” laments that the sixtieth anniversary of the first official test series between black and white countries (West Indies v. England, in 1928) occurs next June and the cricket world should be celebrating.