Money, money, money
It’s so funny
In the rich man’s world

— Abba

LAST week, one had written about suspicions pertaining to the motives of the Australian cricket team’s reluctance to tour Pakistan, which by the time you read these lines, could very well have been all called off.
The lyrics at the beginning of this piece are from a number sung by famous pop group Abba — heartthrobs to millions of teeny boppers around the globe in the late Seventies and early Eighties.
Once cannot ascribe a more realistic account of what is at the heart of Australian cricket team’s tour of Pakistan, which was scheduled a long time ago under the aegis of the International Cricket Council (ICC)’s Future Tour Programmes (FTP).
But first, let’s get the facts right. The sissy attitude of Cricket Australia (CA) — the board that runs Australian cricket — to undertake the visit is different from the cold feet developed by its World Champion outfit.
While they both speak in unison about security concerns, the latter is increasingly betraying signs that skipping the Pakistan tour is really about the multi-million greenbacks on offer at the Indian Premier League (IPL), whose timing coincides with the Pakistan tour.
Interestingly, CA has already had an internal wrangle with its own players over the issue of sponsorship clash but it has been sorted out — to the satisfaction of the players. Else, the possibility of raising a new team would have been real since almost the entire lot of the current team is up for grabs at IPL.
However, what may be of interest to the Pakistanis is how Australian captain Ricky Ponting condescendingly, described the recent switchover of ten Pakistani players to the rebel Indian Cricket League as a choice driven by good prospects, contrasting that with the supposed desire of his players to serve the country on priority.
However, Ponting could not keep a self-righteous lid over a boiling pot for long and later admitted that players across the world were faced with a situation here: earn big bucks for a wham-bang form of cricket or sweat over aspiration to turn out in national colours, which may or may not even materialize.
The earlier arrogance ascribed to “loyalty” was, therefore, all the more audacious. But wait till you hear a clearer pitch.

Temptations

I mentioned two players in this space last week, who had begun to crow about insecurity dogging their mind on the Pakistan tour quite early in the day. One of them, Andrew Symonds, held little back in comments over the weekend, which deserve to be heard in detail to make sense of what is on the mind of Aussies.
He wrote in the Courier-Mail: “The loyalty of Australian and other top international cricketers is definitely going to be tested over the next few years.
Just last week we saw a couple of top Pakistanis join the rebel Indian Cricket League and there’s a stack of Australian players keen to have a crack at the IPL.
For me, there’s no question the baggy green cap is still the jewel in Australian cricket’s crown. But the way things are heading loyalty is really going to become a major issue, particularly when you can make more money in six or eight weeks than what you can in a whole season.
Loyalty versus money always makes for an interesting debate. Who wouldn't be tempted to take a job offering more money for less work?
On the flip side, there's a big argument that logic doesn't apply when you're representing your country in professional sport.
Looking ahead, a lot of countries must confront the serious threat that it’s more financially viable for blokes to retire and play IPL or even ICL. So the administrators want to be careful that international cricket doesn’t suffer.
They need to find a way to be able to work with the IPL so everyone’s available.
Otherwise you’re going to have blokes retiring early or just saying, ‘look, it’s not worth the heartache. I can earn more in a very short period of time’.
Right now, you’d have to be nervous if you’re a cricket administrator of any of the big cricket-playing countries. I’m talking the likes of Australia, South Africa and England.
The pressure’s on big time to really look after the players, especially at the peak and then coming down the back end of their careers.
The bottom line is the money on offer in India is not going away and it may even get more and more tempting.”

Exaggerated threat

As opposed to the greed for money of its players, Cricket Australia appears to be rounding on the issue of security, which is inflated to say the least and ignores the assurances of a state-of-head level security cover promised by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).
No cricketer of any race, colour or creed has ever been a victim of a terroist attack in Pakistan but it seems CA probably takes the status of its World Champion team as a sort of bargaining chip to bully its way around.
They would not dare do this to India, which has pleasantly surprised Pakistani fans by throwing its weight behind the PCB in asking CA to keep its end of the commitment — even going to the extent of suggesting that backing out would have repercussions.
That having said, the PCB needs to keep a sane head around looking at alternatives to replace the reluctant Aussies. It is a little amateurish to suggest that a return visit Down Under next year will be scrapped in a tit-for-tat move. Besides incurring a huge financial penalty, it is against the spirit of the game.
Former captain Asif Iqbal makes a lot of sense in advising  caution. He says:
“Such a threat would in all probability bring the PCB into direct confrontation with the ICC rules on the subject. The ICC rules allow the cancellation of a tour due to security reasons but not as retaliation against a tour previously cancelled.
The way to play this would be to let the Aussies know through unofficial channels that such action was a possibility and the way it would be done would be by sending a Pakistani security team to Australia shortly before the proposed tour — and the more shortly the better as it would leave the Aussies with less time to arrange a replacement tour — and then regret that the security report had left the PCB with no option but to cancel the tour.
The details of the report do not have to be revealed to anyone, as indeed the Aussies have not even named the sources on whose report they are showing such reluctance to tour Pakistan.”
One hopes the PCB will pick up the sane advice.