David Leggat: Howard's way not favoured by ICC nations

John Howard. Photo / Mark Mitchell

You can tell where the Australians are sitting around the International Cricket Council table in Singapore this week.

They're the men with the shiny black eyes after their former Prime Minister John Howard was roundly rejected as heir apparent to the biggest job in the game.

Howard was being lined up as vice-president for two years until 2012, at which point he would replace India's Sharad Pawar for his own two-year term.

The little self-confessed cricket "tragic" was a joint nomination by Cricket Australia and New Zealand Cricket under a regional turnabout arrangement, by which the job is spread round the globe.

NZC had put up its former boss, prominent businessman Sir John Anderson, as its preferred choice. But a panel comprising two men from each country and chaired by another Australian meant the dice, purely on numbers, were always loaded against Anderson.

Australia, a giant of the game and one of its two founding members along with England, would never have countenanced having to accept someone from the "Shaky Isles" because they couldn't come up with someone more appropriate. Quelle horreur!

And so New Zealand was left having to publicly support Howard, who always had little to commend him for the job.

Six countries signed a letter rejecting Howard on Tuesday night. Zimbabwe, one of those which voiced anti-Howard concerns, didn't sign.

Howard had been in Zimbabwe several days before trying to drum up support. When he was running Australia he had been vocal in his condemnation of that country's political system - in itself far from a crime - given the appalling regime of President Robert Mugabe.

New Zealand, Australia and England were in favour of Howard.

It tells plenty about the state of CA's administration that it could not find a suitable cricket person from within the vast brown land to nominate.

The most likely outcome from the solid rejection of Howard is that, in the short term, the ICC will carry on without a deputy inked in. The transtasman boards have been asked to re-nominate a candidate by August 31. Anderson's stock will surely have risen without so much as having to pick up a phone.

If CA and NZC didn't see this embarrassment coming, they were seriously caught with their pants down.

From the time Howard's name was put up, there were strong vibes, not to mention forceful public utterances from various points of the cricket compass, alarmed at his nomination.

He had done no cricket administration - a strong point in Anderson's favour - and tended to turn up in front of the cameras attempting to bowl in nets with cringeworthy results.

Even so, Howard's nomination should have been a rubber-stamp exercise.

That it was not points to deep unease among the non-white member nations - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the West Indies, along with Zimbabwe's neighbour, South Africa - about whether Howard was a good fit for the job, and a person they could happily work with.

Cricket Australia deserved no better.