'ICC not serious about associates'

Published on:

22 Jun 2015, 12:00 am

With the ICC annual conference set to begin in Barbados on Monday, former vice-president of Canada Cricket Howard Petrook has accused the world governing body of short-sightedness as far as growing the sport among the Associate member countries was concerned.Hitting out at ICC, Petrook said the world governing body was not serious about making cricket an Olympic sport, which would have helped them get more sanctions."Time and again the ICC fails to help countries like not only Canada but Ireland, Holland and Scotland. It's not me who says so, everybody in the associate countries will tell you that. They have Bangladesh and Zimbabwe as Full Members but they aren't strong countries.

"A Full Member gets about 20-30 million USD a year. Give that money to Ireland or Canada and I absolutely guarantee you in five years we would be beating those smaller Test countries," Petrook, who is the chairman of cricket at the Toronto's iconic Cricket, Skating and Curling Club, said.

He also claimed that the ICC was not in "favour" of including cricket in Olympics."They (Canada Cricket) gets about 400-500,000 a year but it' not enough, what they need is about 3 million. If they really cared about cricket, then why it is not an Olympic sportIJ The IOC had invited them and ICC and the BCCI did not want it."It's a very big deal for Canada and the US. If it is an Olympic sport, you get a lot more government funding than a non-Olympic sport."

There may be less than 300 archers in Canada but being an Olympic sport they still get about one and half million dollars per year.

"If ICC really cared about cricket, why not help it become an Olympic sportIJ" he asked.

In a country that has about 2.5 million South Asian population, cricket in Canada is quite popular and one of the fastest growing sports, and Petrook claimed ICC would make more money here than any other place."If the ICC makes cricket successful in North America there's more money here than the rest. There's more TV dollars, more seats in the stadiums. So make the party bigger and you will have more choices, more TV revenues."We have more cricket leagues than they do in NZ, Zimbabwe and West Indies most probably. On any given weekend, 120-200 teams play in greater Toronto. It's the fastest growing sport in the schools in this province. There's not a decline in participation but a certain decline in standards and discipline." he said.