Andrew Miller: Sampson old boy, how the devil? Still sticking it to The Men, I trust? I hear rumours that Death of a Gentleman has released in India, which is tremendous news and a huge feather in your campaigning cap. I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, as George Galloway once said (I think) of Giles Clarke.

On a related note, I was amused to see the words "transparency" and "governance" appearing in the same sentence of the ICC's press release after their board meeting in Dubai in February. A quick search through my 20,000-odd unread Gmail messages confirmed that this was, indeed, the first instance of such a juxtaposition in any ICC release since at least 2007. And given how heroically you have striven to have those words added to cricket's lexicon, I for one refuse to believe it was a coincidence.

I am very proud to have played a small part in bringing Death of a Gentleman into the world, and have enjoyed watching the accolades roll in over the past few months (don't worry, my free copy will do for payment). And yet, one thing has bugged me ever since those frantic final days of the editing process at Silverglade, when the clock was ticking and 400 hours of interviews had yet to be turned into 90 minutes of coherent narrative, and your producers were haranguing you for a plausible pay-off, an answer to that thorniest of questions: "So, what's the solution then?"

Since rugby union's return to the Olympics was announced in 2009 around £20m has been invested in the sport by National Olympic Committees Collins

And the solution you identified was... the Olympics.

Okay, so the topic had to make the cut in one way or another, simply to enable that magnificently malevolent exchange between you and dear old Giles - "I have every right to put my board's interests first…" and all that. But all the same, I still struggle to be convinced that it really can be the answer to cricket's ills.

Here's how I see the Olympics - as a depository for the marginalised and irrelevant, a once-a-leap-year invitation for sport's Cinderellas to come to the ball and make off with the prince as well. It all ends up back in sackcloth and ashes. Has anyone paid any attention to badminton or white-water canoeing recently?

I'll be the first to admit, it is certainly fun while it lasts. But is this really the company that cricket needs to keep? Is the sport really so lacking in ambition and self-esteem that it needs to outsource its issues to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), like a bank flogging its bad debt, rather than address them itself? You'll probably say "probably" and I'm still willing to be convinced. But I just don't buy that Olympic status is the panacea it is being made out to be.

Yours in the runs,
Miller

Olympic status is one way to secure the sport's future © Getty Images

Sam Collins: Miller, you sordid corporate-dollar guzzler, I'm sorry to hear about your bad tum, but how good of you to take time out from bathing in the fountain of Walt Disney to break bread with the little men.

Now, this is interesting. While trying to anticipate your angle of attack, I was in full expectation that you'd be trying to paint me as worthier than a religious volunteer on a church bench in the centre of Worth sucking on a Werther's Original. But you've gone rogue. In between claiming full credit for Death of a Gentleman, and calling me cheap, you've subtly painted me as more cynical than a circa-2005 Lalit Modi, who scarcely even had to pretend to like cricket to orchestrate the multibillion-dollar T20 revolution that crystallised this whole mess in the first place.

My crime, as you would have it, is to have simply slid on the G-string of Olympic participation primarily as a means of providing said anti-corruption-in-cricket-independent-feature-documentary-available-on-a-subscription-video-platform-near-you-soon with a plausible alternative to the "GIVE ME MORE NOW" attitudes of the cricket boards, an antidote to the administrative short-sightedness and incompetence that has been running a great sport into the ground for too long.

Well, in one respect, you're right.

You didn't expect that, did you?

I'm not an Olympic fundamentalist. I don't believe in this "pinnacle of sporting achievement" bollocks. I've become a cold, hard pragmatist. I look at dollars, and I try to speak in common sense. And it is common sense for cricket to be in the Olympics.

Is the sport really so lacking in ambition and self-esteem that it needs to outsource its issues to the IOC, like a bank flogging its bad debt? Miller

I don't think that Olympic participation will solve all of cricket's problems, and I don't think that it will make anyone in the UK (because, like our good friend Giles Clarke, you seem to be looking at this through some red-white-and-blue tinted spectacles) appreciate cricket more. But the more I've studied the utter mess that is the running of the game, the more I can clearly see how becoming an Olympic sport could benefit cricket's growth, helping to provide the money that the ICC is unwilling to commit to funding cricket worldwide.

All sports need money to survive, and Olympic participation would open up millions and millions of dollars of government funding. And isn't it a tantalising prospect that even if cricket's rulers did decide they wanted to spread around a little more of their estimated US$2.3 billion kitty, it could be supplemented by that government funding, improving infrastructure in countries that need all the help they can get, some of which have economies and television markets that could be of huge benefit to even cricket's established powers in a decade or so?

How, please, could that possibly be bad for cricket?

Miller: A cold hard pragmatist, who looks at dollars and deals in common sense... Careful now. I think being locked in that edit suite with so many Big Three reprobates has given you Stockholm Syndrome.

Still, you're not a fundamentalist. Jolly relieved to hear it. I'm not a complete atheist either. But your reply doesn't remotely invalidate my doubts about cricket at the Olympics.

If the ICC wants China to join the cricket family, Olympic participation is the way to go about it © Getty Images

I get that it would widen the sport's base, and unleash a torrent of funding. But at what cost to the already damaged integrity of top-level international cricket?

I'm with you in loathing the word "pinnacle" in a sporting context. Nothing smacks of lip service more readily than some IPL superstar insisting that Test matches remain the "pinnacle" of cricket. However, where the Olympics are concerned, it is either everything to a sport or it is next to nothing.

Pop quiz, hotshot. Here are four plucky Brits who claimed gold medals at the London Olympics in 2012: Ed McKeever, Peter Wilson, Tim Baillie and Etienne Stott. Now, name the sports in which they captivated the nation (*of course you can't, so the answers are below).

Meanwhile, here are four Team GB players who dribbled out on penalties at the quarter-final stage of that year's Olympic football tournament. Ryan Giggs, Daniel Sturridge, Aaron Ramsey and Danny Rose. You see what I'm getting at. Notwithstanding the platitudes that they will doubtless have uttered as South Korea launched into their victory parade around the Millennium Stadium, are we really supposed to believe that Great Britain's random ensemble cared even a smidgen compared to the genuine Olympians for whom 2012 really was the be-all and end-all?

And then there's the newest re-entrant to the Olympic family. Golf. Earlier this year, Adam Scott, the 2013 Masters champion and former world No. 1, withdrew from Rio, dismissing it as an "exhibition event". He'd rather focus on the PGA Tour, thanks very much.

Wake up, we're having this conversation because Test cricket is already dead in all but name, contested, just about, by the three or four teams who make money from it Collins

Clarke's stance as witnessed in Death of a Gentleman was preposterous, of course it was. But if the interview with him is even remotely indicative of cricket's lack of interest in the Olympics (indoor cricket, anyone?), then is it really sensible to send the international game down that path? That way lies madness and marginalisation - if not football's disinterest, then (worse, surely) the sort of team-sport no man's land to which handball, water polo, hockey and synchronised swimming, among others, are condemned.

Cricket is still, just about, better than that.

*Answers: 200m canoe sprint, men's double trap, men's canoe slalom C-2

Collins: Sorry, I fell asleep for a second there. What were you saying? Olympic participation would damage the integrity of international cricket? Oh. Would that be the same international cricket often so lacking in competitive sides and context that not even the players know who or why they are playing half the time? And which format of international cricket would you be talking about? Test cricket? Or T20? Because last time I looked, the whole cricketing world was revelling in the novelty of a short, sharp international T20 tournament.

And that's what cricket in the Olympics should be: a two-week T20 tournament, featuring the best players international cricket can spare (Associates and Affiliates included). This is bigger picture stuff, Miller, it's not about you rattling off random Olympians and obscure disciplines to boost your word count. If cricket has to ape football and be essentially an Under-23 tournament, then so be it. History may not remember all the participants, but the many thousands of children worldwide who would benefit from the government funding will remember the moment cricket thought about their future, and crucially the players outside the biggest nations currently denied the opportunity to compete in most ICC events will have their showcase tournament to aim for.

Do we need to add more paper pushers to the already large numbers mismanaging cricket's affairs? © IDI/Getty Images

Being an administrator is surely about doing whatever it (legally) takes to take your sport to the widest possible audience, and make as much money for the sport as you can in the process. That, for cricket, is the Olympics - a two-week hit every four years that brings the chance to boost the funding and consequently the competitiveness of international cricket (men's, women's and disabled) essentially for free. And the best thing is, the IOC wants it to happen - however cynical their hopes of getting a share of Indian TV rights may be, as a forward-thinking administrator this has to be one time you don't mind being used. Only the brains at the current ICC could pass up this sort of opportunity.

The ICC now claims to be debating the Olympic question, while apparently privately believing there is no chance in hell. Those in favour are "naive", while various defeatist suggestions fly as to why cricket couldn't be an Olympic sport, including fundamentally incorrect arguments that the Olympics would devalue ICC events, and - strangest among them - the idea that you couldn't fit a T20 tournament (where matches last three hours) into two weeks.

Yes, there are bigger issues, such as India's non-compliance with the World Anti Doping Agency regulations, but this is a situation where Giles Clarke and Co should be using whatever diplomatic skills they possess to do the bidding of the 90% of ICC nations who favour Olympic participation, rather than prioritising the demands of domestic television contracts. Instead, self-interest prevails, as cricket continues an inexorable contraction towards its three richest countries and privately owned T20 franchise leagues, and these "administrocrats" don't even have to pay us the courtesy of explaining their decisions. And that is the worst thing about it. At least if cricket was properly run we could trust that it was rejecting the Olympics for good reason, but it isn't and we can't.

Miller: All right, all right, keep your wig on. You may have spent four years asking awkward questions of the rich and powerful, but that doesn't give you the right to get all haughty when your stance is questioned. (Mind you, what other tips have you picked up from the master? I look forward to the wine at our next lunch!)

Here's how I see the Olympics - a once-a-leap-year invitation for sport's Cinderellas to come to the ball and make off with the prince as well Miller

Anyway, back to the debate. You question my fear about the integrity of cricket, yet you seem to think that the sport would become more integrated if it answered to two global institutions, not one? It's not just etymology that tells you that is nonsense.

You say the Olympics would be a "two-week hit every four years". Are you really sure about that? We aren't just talking about the time it takes up in the calendar (although, I grant you, that was the ECB's principal objection). It's the knock-on effects of IOC involvement that concern me - you only need to look at the plutocratic demands they make of their host cities to know they won't simply pop up, brimming with largesse, for two weeks in every 200 then quietly slip away.

You say it's "fundamentally incorrect" that an Olympic event would undermine an ICC one, but it's not just Clarke apologists who are willing to make that point. Take the head of a prominent players' association you were in touch with. He rightly queries who is going to pay the sport's bills if cricket goes to the Olympics.

The IOC doesn't cough up any dividends from its massive commercial returns (some $6-8 billion at the last time of asking), and most of cricket's associations are broke already. So, what next? Do we really expect individual governments - national taxpayers, no less - to prop up the sport for evermore? You talk of all the government funding that will be unlocked by OlympIN (to coin a phrase), but what if that tap gets turned off at some time in the future? What if the stench of an IOC scandal becomes too niffy to countenance, or if austerity kicks in and a hatchet-wielding chancellor just thinks, cricket… meh.

The International Olympic Committee is keen to have cricket on the roster because of the potential windfall it could receive from Indian TV rights deals © AFP

And what if that tap doesn't get turned off? I think of Bermuda, to name one example of a nation that was showered with too much government largesse (on account of their qualification for the 2007 World Cup). They sank like Dwayne Leverock in a lard-filled swimming pool - dragged down by an ambition-less nexus of elite (well-remunerated) players and held under by next to no investment in grass-roots cricket. Last September cricket in Bermuda was again in the headlines following a brawl in the national club final.

The point is, you might widen cricket's footprint via OlympIN, but you would be doing nothing to tackle the basic governance issues that you and I both believe to be at the root of the game's current ills. And given that the IOC is even more inscrutable than the ICC, I suspect that giving in to being "used" (your word, not mine) would simply exacerbate them.

Collins: Wine at lunch? Let's hope the Cricket Monthly's expenses stretch as far as the ECB's are rumoured to have done.

I'm not sure where to start my response to your latest barf.

Do you genuinely believe that any level of sporting corruption could make these PR and consequently sports-obsessed governments turn off the funding tap?

At least if cricket was properly run we could trust that it was rejecting the Olympics for good reason, but it isn't and we can't Collins

In terms of cricketing countries being showered by funding and failing to make the most of it due to administrative short-sightedness, incompetence and perhaps even corruption, I'm sure we're both in agreement that this is a live issue for the game whether that money comes from governments or - as it currently does - the ICC. Anyway, let's talk specifics for a second.

One problem cricket doesn't have is generating money, but seeing as its three biggest countries don't have much intention of sharing it, this is where that Olympic pot comes in. We only have to look at other sports to see the impact - since rugby union's return to the Olympics was announced in 2009, around £20m has been invested in the sport by national Olympic committees. Badminton is another sport to have benefited: following its debut at the 1992 games, the International Badminton Federation estimated that more than $100m a year of government funding began pouring into the sport purely because it was on the Olympic programme. And as far as spreading the game goes - guaranteeing more money for the sport in the process - since tennis was readmitted to the games in 1988, the number of nations affiliated to the International Tennis Federation has grown from 147 to 211. Even golf is realistic about the Olympics being a possible way to resuscitate a sport whose fans are dying off (literally) even more quickly than county memberships.

In China the worth of Olympic participation is estimated at $20m a year in government funding for cricket, and there is precedent for other sports in that country. Rugby sevens' Olympic status has transformed the sport there from a tin-pot operation run by one man and a few students, into a professional outfit with access to the country's outstanding athletes at sports-specific schools, and also now incorporates a women's rugby sevens team. This further illustrates the far-reaching benefits of Olympic participation to women's sport - the debut of women's rowing in 1976 was a watershed (pun intended) moment for the sport, finally giving women access to funding and facilities that had previously been reserved for men. Given the rapid growth of women's and disabled cricket around the world, but still the comparative lack of participation and funding, this is an opportunity cricket can't afford to turn down.

Dwayne Bravo and Chris Gayle will find themselves on opposing sides in an Olympic match © Getty Images

For all your worries about IOC involvement, the only negative I've found from any of these sports after embracing the five rings is allegations that funding tends to be targeted at the elite, with little trickle-down effect. But even this "problem" would help cricket to tackle its major on-pitch problem - not enough competitive teams at the international level. If West Indies were able to invest in better facilities at the top level (remember Ramnaresh Sarwan's rant about the last few years), they would be better able to compete at the top level in Test cricket, and therefore a more attractive proposition for the kids currently so disillusioned by the vicious circle of poverty, administrative incompetence and poor performance. But I suppose you'll now come back and tell me that West Indies wouldn't even compete in an Olympics.

Miller: No, you're right, West Indies wouldn't compete in the Olympics. The likes of Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago would go it alone, and in the case of T&T, I reckon they might even have picked up a medal with their Daren Ganga-led side had they competed in London 2012.

Okay, so now I'm arguing at cross purposes but, as I conceded from the outset, I'm not an unequivocal naysayer. I can see the benefits from the Olympics and I don't dispute that the competition would be a success for that one fortnight in four years.

But West Indies are the perfect example of the fragmentation and competing priorities that would kick in as soon as such a beast was unleashed. Okay, so maybe they are already dead as a Test team - the WICB is not fit for purpose and West Indies' recent World T20 triumph was achieved in spite of the fools at the helm who have mismanaged the region for decades.

Realistically all that would be left standing, after the Olympic T20 tsunami, would be the Ashes and... er... that's it Miller

Or maybe they aren't quite dead and this would be a mercy killing. But make no mistake, the impact of inviting a new bossman in to "help" the sport before it has learnt to help itself would be shattering. Whether that is shattering in a good way or a bad way depends on how bleak you currently believe the game's prospects to be.

But let's pop back to Death of a Gentleman briefly, because, Lord knows, you need another plug, you impoverished renegade. Remember, if you can, the original premise of your film - it was that nagging existential fear for your favourite, and still the world's greatest form of the game, Test cricket.

OlympIN would be Tests out. West Indies, gone at a stroke. Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, New Zealand to follow soon enough. India might pretend for a while because they rather enjoy their cosy bilateral arrangements with England and Australia, but realistically all that would be left standing, after the Olympic T20 tsunami, would be the Ashes and... er... that's it.

Surely we are better staying in and trying to reform the game on the game's own terms, than taking on the world before we actually know what we want for our sport?

Collins: This feels like the last gasps of a desperate man, Miller. Is there, for example, any rationale behind your assertion that the Olympics would kill off Test cricket? Wake up, we're having this conversation because Test cricket is already dead in all but name, contested, just about, by the three or four teams who make money from it while everybody else fills in the fixture card for posterity.

Sam Collins (front row, fifth from right) at a protest against the Big Three in London © Getty Images

The only way you save the Test game is by creating more competitive teams over the long term, and addressing the financial disparities currently pulling the sport apart. In this context I'm not sure how the chance of extra funding for Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Co could possibly be a bad thing for the Test game. Rather it is a throw of the dice that could actually help to reinvigorate things, and surely this chance to grow the game in countries beyond the established powers (with the aim that they will aspire to play the longest form of the game) could be perfectly timed given the ICC finally appears set to open the door to the smoking room?

You can romanticise all you want about West Indies. Gideon Haigh put it to us rather well (in a bite that sadly ended up on the cutting-room floor) that it may be that West Indies - with their dysfunctional governance and several competing interests - are themselves a vestige of the Caribbean's (and cricket's) past rather than what it might become. I hope that's not the case, that they can re-establish themselves as the power base that cricket is desperate for them to be. But the game's problem is that as they have fallen apart there has been no one coming through to take their place - whether due to a lack of funding, lack of opportunity or other reasons - and that is what has to change. Other major sports (football, rugby to name two) are implementing huge expansion in front of our eyes, and with more and more entertainment options and less and less time to indulge them, the same globalisation and technological growth that brought cricket's financial windfall could well finish the global game off, and sharpish.

You can put the Olympic schemozzle up there with cricket's procrastination over day-night cricket, its failure to harness online streaming, the game's almost non-existent YouTube presence - all proof that the men in charge of this sport are still embarrassingly behind the times when it comes to engaging with their potential audience.

Cricket's rulers need to catch up, and quickly, before that papier mâché rock of TV dollars that they are desperately clinging to is submerged by the self-inflicted tsunami of reality. I'm all in.

Miller: Ah sod it, we're all doomed. Let's go to the pub.

Andrew Miller is UK editor of ESPNcricinfo. He tweets @miller_cricket. Sam Collins is a freelance film-maker, journalist and author. His first film - Death of a Gentleman - was awarded Best Documentary at the UK Sports Journalism Awards 2015 and is available worldwide on Netflix. @sampsoncollins

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

 

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