No reading between the lines

If the leaked report from Malcolm Speed is to be believed - and the BBC's Mihir Bose, the source, is well connected and very reliable - then Zimbabwe Cricket has finally been exposed for the disreputable organisation that stakeholders inside the country have been claiming for several years.

Speed's comments cut to the heart of the cancer that has seen Zimbabwe descend from a credible player on the international circuit to a shambles where grassroots cricket is dying through neglect and a few woefully inexperienced and under-prepared students are forced to masquerade as an international side.

The language in the report is unequivocal. It refers to the board's accounts being "deliberately falsified to mask various illegal transactions", says that "it may not be possible to rely on the authenticity of its balance sheet", and concludes by referring to the ICC's code of ethics being breached. There is no reading between the lines. It's rotten to the core. You can almost here the cries of "we told you so" from former stalwarts of the game inside the country.

It helps explain why when Zimbabwe has received millions of dollars from the ICC, precious little of that got through to clubs and schools, and why cheques issued by the board repeatedly bounced. The players, at the brunt of the on-field humiliations, will now understand why they have been repeatedly paid late, if at all. They are still waiting for their World Cup monies. Given that the ICC is withholding more than two-thirds of the amount owed to the board, the cash might never be forthcoming.

And there is a bitter irony that in the same week the players were told they had to buy their sponsored cars in lieu of money owed to them, the board has been discovered importing cars to make a quick buck by selling them inside Zimbabwe in local currency.

Speed's conclusion "that the game in Zimbabwe and, more widely, the rest of the cricket world, will not be well served by Zimbabwe resuming Test cricket at this stage" sounds the death knell for the country at the game's top table.

Without Test cricket as the lure, many players, already embittered by their treatment and the endless non-payment of fees, are likely to call it quits. Cricinfo is already aware of at least three of the World Cup squad who have started making plans overseas. Those who remain may be keen but the country is disintegrating about them and their priorities will almost certainly be elsewhere.

Clearly those at the top of the board have to go. The credibility of Peter Chingoka and Ozias Bvute, who sat on two ICC committees this week, has been blown out of the water. But the problem is that so ruthlessly and efficiently have they culled all opposition to them, that it is hard to see where any credible successors will come from.

Peter Chingoka and the leadership of Zimbabwe Cricket have left the game in a mess that it may never recover from © Getty Images

Zimbabwe grew into the success story of the 1990s because of strong administrators, almost all dedicated volunteers, and dedicated players. The administrators, who dared challenge the antics of the board, have been driven away while most of the players have left the country. There's almost no one left.

So not only have the leadership of Zimbabwe Cricket squandered the money that rightly belongs to every player and volunteer in the country, they have also left the game itself in such a mess that it probably will never recover.

Now, more than ever, the ICC can do something positive and help Zimbabwe. It is part of the way there by exposing the leadership for what it is and, hopefully, ending their tenure. Now it has to try and gently blow on the remaining flickering embers to keep them alight until such a time that the country emerges from the chaos that envelops it.