From: vigneswa@ecs.umass.edu
Newsgroups: rec.sport.cricket
Subject: Inside Story:  Gower, MCC, TCCB.......
Date: 9 Jan 93 15:08:13 GMT

The Gower Debate: MCC puts case ahead of special general meeting:
                  Support selectors or risk anarchy

	The committee strongly opposes this resolution [of no confidence 
in the England selectors] and, in any event, does not consider it a suit-
able issue on which to have called a Special General Meeting.  The first-
class game in  England has been  administered by  the  Test  and  County
Cricket Board (TCCB) since 1968.  The TCCB has 20 voting members, the 18
first-class counties, MCC and  the Minor  Counties  Cricket  Association.
The chairman of the TCCB is Mr W R F Chamberlain, who is also  president
of Northamptonshire County  Cricket Club.  The selectors of the  England
team are  appointed by, and answerable to, the TCCB.  The selectors  for
home  Test matches  are Mr E R Dexter (chairman), Mr D L Amiss, and  the 
England captain  and team manager, who, at the  end of last summer, were 
Mr G A  Gooch and Mr  M J Stewart respectively.  They  are  assisted  by
written and verbal reports  from the regions, provided by Mr A P E Knott
(Kent and England) and Mr FJ Titmus (Middlesex and England), who operate
mainly in the South and the Midlands; by  Mr C A Milton (Gloucestershire
and England) from the West Country, and by Mr P J Sharpe (Yorkshire  and
England) from the North. In choosing the touring party for India and Sri
Lanka,  Mr Dexter, Mr Amiss, Mr Gooch and Mr Stewart were joined by Mr K
W R Fletcher, Mr Stewart's  successor  as team  manager, Mr O S Wheatley,
chairman of the TCCB cricket committee, and Mr AC Smith, chief executive
of the TCCB, who all  had the right to vote, and  Mr R Bennett, the tour
manager, Mr N Gifford, manager of the  England A team, and the  chairman
of the TCCB, who did not.  These are men with long playing experience in 
first-class  cricket who have  kept in close  touch with the game and in
whose integrity  the committee  has every confidence.  Between them they
played no fewer than 406 Test matches world-wide. To give an idea of the
thoroughness with which the ground is  now covered, they  spent 150 days
on scouting  missions in the  1992 season.  The  corresponding figure in
1986 was 60 days.  The two points regarding the Resolution have received
especially wide  press coverage.  The first  claims that there  can have
been no good cricketing grounds for the omission of David Gower from the
party to tour India, and that he must therefore have been left out for a
discreditable reason, such as a grudge.  This is  a direct attack not on 
the judgment but on the integrity of the selectors. The deliberations of
the  selectors invariably  have been and always should be conducted on a
basis of  confidentiality.  To draw  an  inference  of bad faith  from a
silence that is best not broken is unworthy and unfair.  It also implies
that Mr Gooch, on what he has said will be his last tour, and Mr Fletcher,
on what is his first  as the team manager, let alone the other selectors,
are not  primarily  concerned with  achieving the best  possible results.
This, of course, is nonsense. The second point concerns the selection of
players who went to South Africa, against the wishes of the TCCB, during
the  winter of  1989-90.  The period of the  disqualification  of  these
players from international cricket was stipulated, and eventually termi-
nated, by  the  International  Cricket Council.  As a result, the TCCB -
namely England - is  bound by its ruling.  If the  selectors had imposed
their own  additional  suspension  and excluded  them from consideration,
they would have  broken faith  with the  international cricket community
and imposed an illegal restraint on the players concerned. The committee
recognises and respects the sincerity with  which the signatories of the
Resolution believe the selectors picked the wrong team to represent Eng-
land this  winter.  Their dissent focuses on  Mr Gower, but the names of
others, Mr R C Russell and Mr I D K Salisbury among them, have also been
mentioned. This is so subjective, and so  provocative an issue, that the
committee was  unanimously opposed to a Special General  Meeting, called
at great expense and  simply to express dissent.  The days are long gone
when, constitutionally, MCC's was the prevailing influence on the choice
of the England team. Even when it was, there was seldom an occasion when
their  decisions  met  with universal  approval.  In such  matters it is
hardly  possible to satisfy everyone, and the  committee does not see it
as the  Club's part  now to take  issue with  the TCCB on  the merits or
otherwise of the selectors' efforts.  It would rather  point to the fact
that in 1992 England  played 26 fully  representative matches, of  which
they won 16, and that last March they reached the final of the World Cup.
In 1991  they became the first  England side since 1973-74 to  hold West
Indies in a  full Test  series.  If the  selectors  are to be called  to
account when there is disagreement with their conclusions, however wide-
spread that disagreement may be, it will not be possible to get the best
men to undertake the job. The Club can ask no more of the TCCB than that
they should  appoint selectors  of wide experience who are  respected in
the game and give of their honest best.  The committee is confident that
they  are doing this; and therefore, as a constituent member of the TCCB,
the Club has a responsibility to back them.  Any other policy could very
soon lead to anarchy. Mr Gower has said himself how much better he feels
it would have been had his  supporters rested their  case some weeks ago.
The Committee  urges members to vote  against the Resolution and to give
their unqualified support to all  England teams when they take the field
this year.

=====
Vicky:
UMass, Jan 09