Cricket: Kiwi missionary has a vision

By RICHARD BOOCK

Andrew Eade walks in the footsteps of his missionary father and grandfather, albeit with a slightly different message.

The International Cricket Council's new global development manager shoulders the complicated responsibility of taking cricket to the world's most unlikely locations, and broadening the base of the game's participation and support.

The new job has meant a shift from his former regional base in Melbourne to ICC headquarters at Lord's, where the 38-year-old Aucklander is attempting to unravel the many political, cultural and economic issues facing the game's emerging nations.

Whatever the results, it seems the ICC could hardly have found a better-suited crusader.

Educated at Mt Albert Grammar, Eade was born in the remote Indian town of Shillong, where his father and grandfather were working as a Baptist missionaries.

He retained a worldly perspective even when living in Auckland and later spent many months backpacking through Asia, Africa and South America.

Initially a lawyer by profession, the former Suburbs New Lynn club administrator, coach and manager shelved his legal career to follow a love for cricket, and was appointed the ICC's regional development officer for the East Asia-Pacific region in April 1999.

He said this week that the intention was to push a three-pronged initiative to boost the development of cricket within the ICC, which boasts 10 full member countries, 26 associate members and 28 affiliates.

"The obvious aim is to increase the number of countries playing the game," Eade said. "But there's also a strong desire to improve the quality of cricket being played by the emerging nations, and to do more to promote and publicise the game around the world.

"Bangladesh have recently become the 10th nation to attain test status but there's no one else really pressing for admission and we'd prefer to see other teams making similar advancements.

"Kenya are on their own in having ODI status but not test status," he said. "And in all fairness they're a long way away from making that final step. It's not just their playing ability, they haven't got the infrastructure to support test cricket."

Eade said with this in mind it was important to do more for the countries who were not yet established in a cricketing sense, rather than concentrating resources and funding on the few nations who managed to make the grade.

He described the ICC Trophy tournament, badge of supremacy among the associate members, as an annual festival of cricket which often doubled as a social event because many of the sides had little or no chance of competing against the favoured few.

To help to address the problem, he is organising a more progressive qualifying competition among the associates and affiliates, in order to avoid the embarrassing mismatches while still leaving the door open for advancement.

The first tournament, for seven Pacific-based teams, will be staged in Auckland in February and will be run by New Zealand Cricket.

Associate members Papua New Guinea and Fiji are hoping to attend, as are affiliates Vanuatu, New Caledonia, the Cook Islands, Tonga and Samoa.

"Fiji used to be quite strong through the 1950s,"he said.

"But they drifted off to sleep a bit as far as their cricket was concerned, and now this political problem has really put a spanner in the works.

"But hopefully we can help Fiji to regain some momentum.

A full-time administrator is being appointed, a coach - former New South Wales representative and NZC marketing manager Neil Maxwell - and a lot of effort is being put into improving their resources.