ICC Rejects John Howard as Vice President Candidate
Australia’s candidate for the next vice-president of ICC, the former Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, has been rejected by the International Cricket Council.
The 70 year old former politician was hoping to be the President of ICC in 2012, because according to ICC rules, the vice-president is eligible to become president after tenure of 2 years.
The International Cricket Council has asked Australia and New Zealand to come up with a new candidate, as Howard did not have enough support from the member countries.
The New Zealand and Australian cricket boards have said that they are hugely disappointed by ICC’s decision, and expected better support from member nations.
The two boards now have till the end of August this year to name another candidate for the 2 year presidency of ICC, for which vice presidency is the first step.
David Morgan, who is from Wales, is the current ICC president, and is due to be replaced later this year by Sharad Pawar from India, who is currently the vice-president. Therefore, the post will soon be vacant and is to be filled by a candidate that is Australasian.
Earlier, there was a joint official statement released by the Australian and New Zealand cricket boards, which said that they had nominated John Howard after thorough consideration and he was clearly the best possible candidate. The statement added that John Howard is a man with great credentials with experience in International bureaucracy while also having exceptional administrative skills. The statement further said that both boards believe that there needs to be a constant need in cricket to seek excellence, and dispassionate independence as far as the governance of game is concerned. However, despite the ICC ruling, they were pleased that most of the senior figures in ICC did give their support to their candidate and considered his nomination.
The statement ended by saying that both boards will once again sit down and decide on what their next action is to be, and will look into finding another suitable candidate for the post.
John Howard lost the elections in Australia in 2007 and decided to retire. Howard has been an adamant cricket fan for years. Initially, Australian and New Zealand cricket representatives had a lengthy disagreement between themselves as to the person to be nominated, as New Zealand wanted their own candidate, former chairman John Anderson, to be the official candidate, but they later agreed with Australia to support Howard.
However, there were reports in two Australian newspapers that only England, Australia and New Zealand voted in favour of Howard, while 6 member countries, including Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan, opposed him.
Howard, when he was the Prime minister of Australia, made some comments where he criticized President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe’s regime, which may have cost him the support from South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Similarly, though Sri Lanka said that Howard does not have a credible cricketing background, and based that as their reason for rejecting him, another reason could be that John Howard was heavily critical of Muttiah Muralitharan prior to a Test tour by Sri Lanka to Australia.
Given their rigid stance that led to Howard's rejection, this proves that if the Asian countries stick together on International cricket issues, they certainly can make their presence felt. They can set a big precedence in future decisions to be made by the ICC, which can affect the Asian member nations in general.
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