With the World Cup one year away, Dave Richardson talks fixing, doping and why cricket doesn’t need another format

Interview: Before we reach the sunlit uplands of next summer's World Cup, there are plenty of grey clouds to negotiate. Dave Richardson, the chief executive of the ICC, is a man on a mission

Dave Richardson has little time for the view of Colin Graves, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, that the younger generation are simply not interested in cricket (Getty)

One of the perils of making a career as a global sporting administrator is that for all its generous remuneration, it can be a fairly humdrum existence. The air-conditioned airport lounges and executive boardrooms all begin to blend into each other after a while. The coffee tastes the same whether you’re in Dubai, Dublin or Durban. The key stakeholder meetings, the furtive politicking, the constant fire-fighting, the pervading scent of the next scandal lurking just around the corner, the concordant and unanimous view of every fan in the game that you are a complete and utter dunce.

Every so often, though, you can escape the treadmill. And for Dave Richardson, the flawed, frustrated but essentially well-meaning chief executive of the International Cricket Council, that escape happens to be a trendy bar in Shoreditch, east London, where dozens of kids from around England are celebrating the one-year countdown to the 2019 World Cup by playing some street cricket. Young shrieks pierce the air. Yellow plastic balls are flying all over the place. Dagenham beat Barking in the final and receive their trophy from a beaming Eoin Morgan.

For Richardson, it is a scene that encapsulates the sort of legacy that he and tournament organiser Steve Elworthy are hoping to craft a year from now, when England take on South Africa at The Oval to bring up the curtain on a tournament that means so much. Inspiring the next generation is the sort of warm fuzzy motif that all global sporting events like to throw around at times like this. But at this crossroads in the global game, when cricket is busily renegotiating the very boundaries of what the sport will look like in future, next year’s World Cup offers a chance to put some meat on the bones.

And as schoolchildren bearing bats and balls begin to descend on the venue, Richardson has little time for the view of Colin Graves, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, that the younger generation are simply not interested in cricket. “That is,” he says with a delicious precision, “very much an English viewpoint. Globally, the average age of the fan is lower than even football, and certainly rugby.”

For the England and Wales Cricket Board, the solution to declining youth engagement has been to burn everything and start again. It is interesting to note how its new 100-ball tournament, to begin the year after the World Cup, has attracted derision not just in this country, but worldwide. Richardson is keeping an open mind, but at a global level he says cricket has little need for new formats.

“From an international point of view, probably we would say no,” he says. “But historically, we used to have 60-over one-day cricket. In England they had a 40-over competition. In South Africa we used to play 45 overs per side. So domestically, there’s always been trialling of different formats. If eventually, it comes about that 100-ball cricket eventually is a better product than T20, then who knows. But certainly there isn’t an appetite to create another format.”

Kids today don’t like cricket? ‘That is very much an English viewpoint,’ says Richardson (Getty)

Of course, before we reach the sunlit uplands of next summer, there are plenty of grey clouds to negotiate. The recent Al-Jazeera documentary has once again raised the ugly spectre of fixing in cricket, with hazy, unsubstantiated and fiercely denied accusations that Test matches between India and England in 2016, and India and Australia in 2017, were partially fixed. Though the accusations appear to be light on detail – indeed, the ICC has complained that Al-Jazeera’s refusal to hand over key evidence has “hampered” their investigation – Richardson believes cricket will learn nothing by being complacent.

“I’m always concerned if people are talking about fixing in cricket,” he says. “I’m a little perturbed by any accusation that we would attempt to sweep it under the carpet, or pretend that nothing has happened. So we will investigate fully. We are meeting with them [Al-Jazeera] in the next couple of days.”

The irony is that over recent years, and decades of scandal, the ICC have done a very reasonable job of safeguarding international cricket against the approaches of fixers. Instead, it is the various and often unsanctioned Twenty20 leagues, popping up all over the world like sprouts on a rotten potato, that provide the broadest target for corruption.

“It would be very surprising if international cricketers were able to be got to,” Richardson says. “And therefore, because that target has been hardened, these guys are now trying to create their own leagues, at a much lower level. I think those leagues do provide an additional opportunity for the people that want to get involved and try and fix.

The one-year countdown to the World Cup was launched in Shoreditch (Getty)

“So what we need to make sure is that anyone staging a T20 domestic tournament – especially televised – that they have in place minimum standards. To make sure they have an anti-corruption code in place, that all the players are educated, and that we are monitoring the franchise owners, the people involved in the tournament, doing due diligence.”

On doping, Richardson acknowledges the increased incentive offered by T20 and its emphasis on power hitting and quick recovery. He insists that the testing programme at international level is substantial and Wada-compliant. He confirms that every team at next year’s World Cup will be tested, although he admits that the recent decision to extend official T20 international status to all ICC members – increasing the number of teams from 18 to 104, the vast majority operating on a shoestring budget – means there is still “some work to do”.

“It’s random, it’s out of competition,” he says. “So if you do it, there is a risk you will get caught. The nature of cricket hasn’t made doping a high risk. To run between the wickets that fraction of a second faster: historically, cricketers haven’t felt the need to bolster their performance by using performance-enhancing drugs.

It’s the various and often unsanctioned Twenty20 leagues that provide the broadest target for corruption (Getty)

“Having said that, with T20 coming to the fore, we recognise that potentially it could become a bigger risk going forward. Slowly and surely, you’ll see the volume of tests that we conduct increasing. First of all, we’ve made sure that all Full Members have an anti-doping code in place. Secondly, to make sure that they all conduct some sort of programme themselves which complements what we do internationally.”

Fielding these sorts of questions has become second nature to Richardson during his six years in the job. And for all the gross incompetencies for which his organisation has been responsible over the years – the Big Three takeover, the restriction of the World Cup to 10 teams, the failure to check India’s political clout, the decades-long refusal to address the decline of Test cricket worldwide – there are certain areas in which the ICC has exercised its limited power to good effect.

And now there is a World Cup on the way, with all the possibilities for renewal and rejuvenation that brings. “The bottom line is that this does present a huge opportunity,” he says. “To attract a new audience, to get people enthused who weren’t necessarily going to cricket matches season after season. We saw it with the Women’s World Cup. I think there is a huge opportunity in having an event in your own country.”