Fears of an Australian Indian confrontation were reignited again last month after John Howard’s bid for Vice President of International Cricket Council, as an Oceania candidate, got rejected. Had John Howard been elected he would have become the President of ICC after two years, when the current President and a powerful Indian cabinet minister Sharad Pawar steps down. However the controversy did not snowball into a media and a diplomatic tug of war, which partly showed how much John Howard is disliked these days even in Australia.

Australian cricket board erred in its judgment by nominating Howard in the first place over NZ Cricket chairman Sir John Anderson who should have been the first choice as the Australia-NZ nomination for ICC. Howard’s criticism of Sri Lankan spinner Murali was too harsh. Prime Ministers in Asian countries don’t go about berating sports persons of other countries. The image of John Howard using tough language after Indian nuclear tests is more etched in Indian minds than John Howard’s decision to sell Uranium to India. Remember John Howard’s treatment of Indian doctor Mohd Haneef to get cheap votes. Howard also adopted an extreme hard line on Zimbabwe. No wonder opposition to John Howard was overwhelming and came from 6 cricketing nations and not just India. His political past would have never allowed him to be consensual candidate. There are just 10 countries who are qualified to play test cricket and a split amongst them would be disastrous for the future of the game.

John Howard showed he is a thick skinned politician when he travelled secretly to Zimbabwe to garner votes for his ICC nomination, forgetting that he had been canvassing against Zimbabwe for most of his political life.

The issue has still not died down and Howard’s refusal to quit has muddied the