Dear Tony,

I have had a look, as usual with great delight, to the latest edition of Beyond the Test World.

Allow me to ponder, albeit at length, on the player elegibility rules, Italy having had a leading role in the standardization process of eligibility qualifications in recent times.

No one in ICC wants players to be able to swap from one country to another. A specific rule already exists in this respect. Sadly, however, a step in the wrong direction was taken in Christchurch in the Executive Board Meeting that took place in January 1999 by producing a ruling, nominally in favour of Anglo/Scotsman Gavin Hamilton, that has opened a door to this occuring.

The main fallacy which will need to be readressed immediately, if we do not want the whole development process to loose its "global" scope, is that of producing a set of unified for all elegibility rules to take effect from April 1st, 2003 when with the beginning of the new World Cup cycle the tournament will incorporate approximately 80 countries from Australia to Vanuatu.

Birth and citizenship are not principles to be discussed. The current Associate Member rules, in breach of natural and international law, discriminate against naturalized citizens as if these were inferiors. Playing cricket for your country is a civil right, just like voting, and it is not clear why a naturalized subject should be deprived of this right.

This is made farcical by the fact that people who are born in a country but do not hold citizenship, maybe because they do not want to, are instead eligible irrespective of any residential qualification. In essence, we have the contradiction of chance, accidental birth, being given privilege over deliberate decision, choosing to be a citizen.

"Ius sanguinis" citizens are completely forgotten by the curent eligibility qualification rules. No one today would question that ICC World Development Manager Andrew Eade is a New Zealander. Yet, he is born in India and lives in England. However, he is not a naturalized New Zealand subject. So what is he?

The answer is very simple but clearly was forgotten by the Associate Member in 1995 when the current rules were produced, nearly exclusively to make sure that a repetition of the 1994 UAE fiasco in Kenya did not occur.

Andrew Eade is a New Zealander by birthright and consequently fully elegible to represent this country, which is his country, irrespective of where he lives.

The same applied in 1997 for Benito Giordano and for this reason in the end ICC allowed him to play for Italy in Malaysia as nothing in the rules stated he could not. Following this, in October 1999 the England & Wales Cricket Board recognized the full eligibility under EEC law of Australian born Italian citizen Joe Scuderi to play county cricket as an EEC player.

As it is not the tradition of a country like Italy, which has in no small way contributed over the last three millennia to the construction of "the Law", to sneak in ringers, since 1997 every year at Council we have tried to have the Giordano ruling sanctioned. Clearly, the matter is extremely embarassing as it forces someone to admit having overlooked the "ius sanguinis" matter.

Furthermore, since Italy totally agrees that it would be completely immoral to fly over a squad of "born abroad" Italians to play in the ICC Trophy, we have given 15 month notice to ICC on the 4 ius sanguinis players that we shall be taking to the next ICC Trophy, Andrea Corbellari and Peter Di Venuto being the other two aside from Giordano and Scuderi. ICC remains silent. That is fine as long as no last minute hiccups occur.

Going back to the general subject of unity of qualifications, however, what ICC has to accept from 2003, if it really wants to become a global body, as opposed to an anglophile club that operates in the global market, is a revolution on eligibility not dissimilar from Galileo's inversion of roles between sun and earth in the 17th century.

Quite correctly, birth and residence were parameters that suited perfectly a sport played mainly by citizens of very few nations. De facto, until World War 2 cricket was an interterritorial sport within the British Empire. Now, 60 years on, if globalization is truely the goal of ICC, then adaptation to the parameters that govern world sport, and also society under other aspects, cannot be discussed.

The new qualification rules that I have already confidentially circulated to the ICC hierarchy, and that, hopefuly improved by those who will have bothered to read them, will be put forward to the June Conference, do not cover for all but for most ! Like with Hong Kong, special and clear rulings will be necessary for territories and entities which ICC recognizes as Members but are not political nations. Parts of the UK such as Scotland and Northern Ireland, in reference to the latter's amalgamation with the Republic in cricketing terms, and other territories like Bermuda and Gibraltar are such cases and surely there will be others I forget.

However, the new global unified rules will allow clarity in ICC's expansansion since it is extremely unlikely that new members in the future will be anything else than nations.

Hoping that the publication of this will help to clear the air.

Dr. Simone Gambino
Rome
Italy

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