The ICC is under someone's thumb

More than one thumb actually.


Anyhow, you still remember Mitch Johnson’s bamboozled face when he got the award last year? It was because of a clever ICC ploy to randomly pick out a candidate from a randomly picked candidate list. That way they return to the noble means of using ‘chance’ alone as a way of justice in the award-giving process, because debating whether player A was better than player B is totally useless. It involves bias and more statistics than there are formulas in the world. No one is crackpot enough to employ this method.


Actually, the ICC Awards are very often just a whole lot of crap. The whole crazy Swann-overlooked-and-then-included-because-of-raving-Clarke-theatre ascertains it.
Clive Lloyd and his selection panel were sitting in the office at 3 am without a cup of tea around and wondering who they should select. ‘Bloody hell!’ one of them exclaimed, ‘Let’s just go country-wise, put a finger on a name and select.’
‘Ingenious!’ The rest shouted, and went on with the job.
England was last on the list, and when their turn came the panel was too tired and left the job for tomorrow only to forget.
The list got published, and when the panel saw Swanny’s name in a newspaper headline the next day in regard to his cat story, they said ‘Ooops. We’ve forgot someone.’


The English Cruel Beast Giles Clarke was on them the next day, and Swann’s name was hurriedly included.
If initially not including him is rubbish (yes I said that Swann, now be grateful for a while), then blaming an ‘oversight’ and rapidly throwing him in the list later is even more pathetic. Why can’t you guys think in advance? Same lame reason that the Hotspot isn’t available for the World Cup.


There also must be some menace-factor about the ECB. Like Duke’s evil soul which they can set loose on the ICC. Probably the reason why their whines got accepted and Norman Arendse complaining of the injustice done to the Saffa candidates last year was taken with a deaf ear.


(And sorry folks for being irregular and rubbish with the posting of late, but I'm a bit busy with work, will try to get things sorted out soon. Also, don't you think I've got a habit of talking about things days after they've happened?)