Dalmiya dares, and delivers

There isn't another bastion like Lord's left of the old boys' network in England, and there isn't another that Indian cricket board chief Jagmohan Dalmiya wants to take on more.

Dalmiya faced this network over four years when he came to the helm of the International Cricket Council as its president. Dalmiya won as the first non-white chief of the ICC to stir up the cosy old bunch. He never became a part of it.

"It is not simply a colour issue because he is Asian," BBC cricket commentator Manab Majumder told IANS . "The ICC can handle the West Indians because they work with the English and the Australians in the same way, but Dalmiya brought a different way of doing things."

Dalmiya raised the resources of the ICC but he raised also the hackles of several of the old boys annoyed by Dalmiya's entry into their exclusive domain. Dalmiya remained under attack for much of his tenure. Then, as now, the attack came through an English media giving voice to the old boys' network of which it was a part.

The greater hostility to Dalmiya comes from the quality press of England, not from the usually more hostile tabloids. England's best-known cricket writers have all been a part of an exclusive Lord's club that can respect outsiders so long as they remain outside of it.

Sunil Gavaskar had for years refused to be honoured at Lord's because of insulting behaviour from this bunch. Now, as then, Lord's remains distinctly unwelcoming to an Indian visitor.

The old English ways are unmistakable at Lord's. The redbrick ICC building stands at one end, only something of a large house to look at. Facing it on the other end of a cricket green are the offices of the England and Wales Cricket Board. To one side of the green, the marquee-shaped club house where members meet for their drink or two - or more. And the cricket field itself on the other side.

It's where you see crusty old members who still dare to wear parrot-green blazers, straw hats and striped ties. These are the members, the selectors, the officialdom of English cricket. It's an establishment that is out of touch with much of England itself.

Ian Botham incurred their wrath by calling them "gin-slinging dodderers". But it's only a few within the English cricket establishment who dare to challenge this cricket aristocracy.

Former captain Mike Gatting, something of a working class cricketer, became one of a few to speak out against them through this controversy. Gatting told the BBC in an interview on Wednesday that the headquarters of the ICC does not have to be in London. Calcutta (now Kolkata) would be more suitable, he said, because they play more cricket in Calcutta than in London.

Gatting stood out as the only English cricketer to agree with Dalmiya on at least something.

The cricket establishment at Lord's had opposed the holding of the World Cup in the Indian sub-continent. Dalmiya has dared this establishment again and again, and got the better of them, and certainly done better than them, again and again.

In this establishment the Ashes is still the ultimate in cricket because it's played between England and Australia. The special place for the Ashes is rooted in the power of this old boys network at Lord's. They have been challenged again. Nobody believes this challenge will be the last.

--Indo-Asian News Service

Mail Cricket Editor