George Bernard Shaw once remarked that ‘Cricket is a game where 11 fools play and 11,000 fools watch’. Whether the 11,000 count was the highest or the lowest number in his estimate is not known, but today, on the eve of the ICC World Cup 2011, the cricket authorities claim that the total viewership will be more than 11 million.
These TV viewership counts are doubtful in my view, as I have espoused earlier based on the ‘The Independent’ investigation.
What ever the count of the idiots who will be viewing the ICC World Cup 2011 (which includes me) there is no doubt that the mandarins in the ICC have absolutely no idea of about how the internet (www) works or how to go about doing things in the net age.
It is difficult to understand what actually these blokes hoped to achieve by publishing in their website a ‘redacted’ and ‘encrypted’ version of the recent spot-fixing report (determination) on the Pakistani players - the news release is here and the report has the following restrictions.
It is a great eye opener on what to look for, how to interpret, determine and if guilty, punish, and what standards to uphold while doing it. The redacted report is just over 100 pages long (by my count - others have put it at 97 pages) and some 20 odd pages are reproduction of telephone conversation and texts between the co-conspirators. The last 10 pages are so are Appendices, of not much interest to us, normal cricketing public.
But the other 70 odd pages make a very fine, interesting reading. If you do want an example of how fine a tribunal finding can be - its objectives, search and determination of facts, evaluation of evidence and recommended punishment or solution - this report is it. Even if you don’t need one such, it makes great reading. Head out, fill up and go!
And here is one of the subject no-balls as captured on TV - it sure is a big, big no-ball.
My Mischievous Half murmurs, ‘Why is ICC’s official website address http://icc-cricket.yahoo.net/? Every bloke who sees that address immediately doubts whether it is actually ICC official site or not!’
update: From http://icc-cricket.yahoo.net/ it has been changed to http://www.icc-cricket.com/.
These TV viewership counts are doubtful in my view, as I have espoused earlier based on the ‘The Independent’ investigation.
What ever the count of the idiots who will be viewing the ICC World Cup 2011 (which includes me) there is no doubt that the mandarins in the ICC have absolutely no idea of about how the internet (www) works or how to go about doing things in the net age.
It is difficult to understand what actually these blokes hoped to achieve by publishing in their website a ‘redacted’ and ‘encrypted’ version of the recent spot-fixing report (determination) on the Pakistani players - the news release is here and the report has the following restrictions.
- The report will be available to the public for only a week (till 16 Feb) and after that will be pulled off the website.
- Since there is a criminal case being pursued in England, the people ‘residing’ in England and Wales are prohibited (under the threat of the British Contempt of Courts Act) from reading the publication.
- To ensure that people adhere to the condition, the viewer is asked to fill out a form, giving the name, address and email etc.
- The webpage clearly states that the ‘print’ function on the report is disabled (as is copy/paste function).
- Haven’t these guys ever heard of webcitation? I am not even going to go into free web hosting sites like mediafire and others. So what is the point of pulling it down after 7 days? And why that specific 7 days and why not after 1 day or 1 month?
- The way my IE8 has been set up, it automatically downloads the report.pdf, which I had to delete later. Even though I don’t live in England or Wales, I have no inclination to tangle with the courts - variety British or variety Indian. ;-)
- The name and address form does not even have basic check protocols. It is not so bad that it allows null entries, but it does not even check whether the name or address do follow some sensible pattern. Just typing ‘a’ as name and ‘b’ as address seems to suffice. It did not accept ‘c’ as email address thank god, but then ‘ab@abc.com’ was more than enough to get around.
- Disabling of copy/paste and print is not of much use when Ghostscript and GSView are available for free, and which *does not* require you to do something to the password protection.
It is a great eye opener on what to look for, how to interpret, determine and if guilty, punish, and what standards to uphold while doing it. The redacted report is just over 100 pages long (by my count - others have put it at 97 pages) and some 20 odd pages are reproduction of telephone conversation and texts between the co-conspirators. The last 10 pages are so are Appendices, of not much interest to us, normal cricketing public.
But the other 70 odd pages make a very fine, interesting reading. If you do want an example of how fine a tribunal finding can be - its objectives, search and determination of facts, evaluation of evidence and recommended punishment or solution - this report is it. Even if you don’t need one such, it makes great reading. Head out, fill up and go!
And here is one of the subject no-balls as captured on TV - it sure is a big, big no-ball.
My Mischievous Half murmurs, ‘Why is ICC’s official website address http://icc-cricket.yahoo.net/? Every bloke who sees that address immediately doubts whether it is actually ICC official site or not!’
update: From http://icc-cricket.yahoo.net/ it has been changed to http://www.icc-cricket.com/.
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