Death of a Gentleman (2015) Movie Script

[birds chirping]
[bird squawking]
[chirping continues]
[indistinct chatter]
[man 1] You can't talk about cricket
without thinking about the values
that were behind it.
The whole idea of fair play,
you walked,
if you nicked it to the wicketkeeper,
you didn't claim a catch
that was on the half-volley.
All these things were part of
what we were trying to say to the world
about the way we should treat one another.
[man 2] The spirit of cricket, I mean,
its integrity, I think its honesty.
It is its own code. Its own moral code.
And it served the game
pretty well for 130, 140 years.
[applauding]
[man 3] I remember Kofi Annan
at the United Nations in New York once
making a comment about something that
had taken place in the world and he said,
"That's not cricket."
Kofi Annan has never played
a game of cricket in his life,
but he knows what cricket stands for,
and if someone at the United Nations,
the head of the United Nations
could use that term,
it means that cricket stands for something
and the game
should never be allowed to die.
[narrator] How could cricket ever die?
[upbeat music playing]
It's the second most popular sport
in the world,
played and watched
by over a billion people.
My name is Sam Collins.
This is my friend Jarrod Kimber.
We're two among
those billion cricket fans.
From different backgrounds
and different sides of the earth,
we've been mad
about cricket our whole lives,
and eventually it brought us together.
Now we get paid to travel the world
and watch it as journalists.
In 2011, we set out to make a film
about the game we love
and whether it had a future
in the modern world.
We couldn't have known then
that we would stumble across
the biggest scandal in sport
or what we would learn about the men
who were supposed
to be the guardians of the game.
[man] Cricket is going through a turmoil.
It is going to destroy
the game and all forms of the games.
We've been involved in playing cricket
and administering cricket forever.
And we have no interest to hurt cricket
in any way. That is incorrect.
[Sam] Although in the end
we would stand by helpless
as 140 years of history was buried
in the urban desert of Dubai.
This is our story.
It's a story about people,
about greed, about power,
about the endless pursuit of more
and the precious things
that are lost along the way.
[melancholic music playing]
You're watching
the Chuck Fleetwood-Smiths.
You're watching
the Chuck Fleetwood-Smiths.
You're watching the Chuck Fleet--
I don't know what happened there.
Chuck, Chuck, Fleet...
[Sam] I was trying to make a career
as a cricket journalist when I met Jarrod,
an Australian blogger
who had come to London
to shake up the establishment.
Quickly realising we had more chance
together than alone,
we started making web videos
for cricket freaks.
We named ourselves
after a famous drunk cricketer
and our mascot Hansie
after a notorious match fixer.
The results were often terrifying.
We are the world champions!
[Sam] You're not though, are you?
You're not.
- [whooping]
- England are! England are!
[Sam] We had two things in common:
our sense of humour...
Would you mind if I asked
what colour your trousers were?
Well, I know what colour my trousers are.
... and a lifelong love
of the oldest form of cricket,
test cricket.
[intense music playing]
[Sam] If you ask me
what made test cricket unique,
I'd say it is the one sport
that is not just about winning.
It's about what you learn
over those five long days.
[man 1] It's called test cricket,
and that's what it is. It's a test.
It's a complete test,
it's a test of your skill,
it's a test of your courage,
and it's a test of your intelligence.
Certainly as a batsman,
as far as I was concerned,
a test match was perfectly named.
It was a test.
[Sam] It's about the contest,
nation against nation, bat against ball.
[man 2] It's like a gun fight
at Okay Corral.
And it's a nasty game
when there's a real baddie.
And it's coming after you.
The opening batter, he's coming after you.
Do you wanna be here
because he's gonna hurt you?
[Sam] About the way
different people play it.
Test cricket allows people
to be big and small, fat and thin,
ugly and beautiful, slow and fast.
And really no other sport does that.
That's a freak of a game.
That's what makes it so special.
[Sam] About how it brings
so many different people together.
Of course, the gentlemen's game
has never been perfect,
but it's our imperfect.
But however great we thought it was,
we were constantly being told
that there was no place
in the modern world
for a game that was a legacy
of imperialism and lasted five days.
[woman] So what are you packing for?
[Jarrod] Australia, India, with Sam.
- Is Sam the other woman?
- Is Sam the other woman, exactly.
[Sam] And seeing
as we were cricket journalists,
we thought we should try and answer
the game's biggest question.
Was test cricket really dying?
I'll only be away for a few weeks
this time. It's not too bad, is it?
[woman] Mmm.
[Sam] The first stop on our journey
was Jarrod's hometown of Melbourne.
We had a crew and a camera,
but no script and no idea
what we were looking for.
So our first call was
to a cricketing friend of ours,
someone's whose journey would mirror
our own over those next few years.
Basically, it's only the whole film
basically hinges on you.
[Sam] 'Cause it really does.
Tell him he's our human angle.
Ed Cowan had just been picked
to make his test debut for Australia.
He wasn't your ordinary sportsman.
[Ed] If I had to cook you a meal
to knock your socks off,
I'd probably do salmon, fennel and dill
on avocado and mango salsa maybe.
I think you'd enjoy it.
[Sam] Ed and Jarrod had met online
a few years earlier
when he was just another young cricketer
trying to make his name.
Now, somehow, we'd persuaded Ed
to let us follow him through
the biggest moment of his career.
Gentlemen, gentlemen.
There's no gentlemen in here, boys.
[Sam] We hoped that
his experiences would show us
what test cricket was really all about.
[man] Edward was passionate about being
the best he always could at everything.
I used to take him
to the nets three days a week
and it'd always be four a game
or he'd want a quick hit,
which meant about, you know, 400 balls.
[laughs]
[Sam] Ed's was the sort of story
that made so many people love sport.
After years struggling with injury,
he had moved his family across
Australia to Tasmania for a fresh start.
[commentator] Shots and then quick turn.
Oh, he's happy with that,
and so is the player.
Ed Cowen, what a great inning.
[Sam] Now he was making
a name for himself.
[commentator] He's happy.
He's fit for Tazzie.
[Ed] It feels as though
all the little moments
feel like they've been justified in a way.
To ruin your wife's career,
to move to an isolated island
off the south of Australia
just so I could play cricket,
that's a big move.
So in a sense it feels as though
that's been justified, I guess.
[Sam] What we were watching
was just the culmination
of a lifetime dedicated to one cause,
playing test cricket for Australia.
[Ed] Test cricket for me, it is the game.
It's the only cricket
how I judge cricketers by.
To all of a sudden be in that cauldron,
I don't know how I'll handle it
until the occasion, I guess.
Boxing Day test play? Debut.
[chanting]
[Sam] When Boxing Day arrived,
80,000 fans descended
on the Melbourne Cricket Ground
for the biggest day
in the cricketing calendar.
Ed had entered a whole new world.
[woman] Walking over here,
I was really quite nervous this morning.
Here, obviously,
when I saw him get handed his baggy green,
it was a very emotional moment.
This is Ed's dream come true,
like, out there today.
His head would be spinning.
This is... He's wanted this dream
ever since the day he was born.
[cheering]
[man] Cricket in Australia
in our summer's a big deal.
Test cricket, being ranked,
that's a big deal.
It's a symbol for kids to dream about
um, and for people to aspire to
and for people to admire.
- [screaming]
- [cheering]
[announcer] Look at them
pounding their way out there.
It's the goose bumps
that you feel every Boxing Day.
And just think about it,
Cowan, what's he going through?
Twenty-nine years of age,
he's got a technique for test cricket.
I'm really looking forward to this.
[Ed] The beautiful thing about cricket is
you're in control of your actions,
so you become very routine focused.
So a lot of the times
you don't notice the crowd.
It's a blur,
you can't see anyone in the crowd.
You can hear them,
but it's sort of that white noise.
When you're at the striker's end
and you see the bowler running in,
it's not just physical,
it's how you breathe
and the number of breaths
and the type of breaths
and it almost becomes
a sort of meditative state
that you can get yourself into
when you're batting.
You know, 80,000 people are coming
to watch you play cricket,
and you're just in your own little world
enjoying your own private test match.
[announcer 1] So here Cowan to take up
the attack to the member's end.
- Ed Cowan on strike.
- [crowd cheering]
[Sam] Now those 80,000 people
in the Melbourne Cricket Ground
and millions more at home on television,
waited to see if Ed Cowan was
up to the challenge.
[announcer 1] He does tend
to leave the ball a lot.
He makes bowlers bowl at him.
He's away!
Great.
[Ed] It probably wasn't
until just before lunch.
That was the moment that I took stock
and looked around and thought,
"Oh, my God, there's some people here.
What are they doing?"
I just had a moment to myself of,
"This is awesome.
I'm having a great time. Just keep going,
mate, you're doing just fine."
[announcer 1] He's done a very good job
today of blocking the attack,
seeing through the new ball.
Now a chance of making 50 on debut?
- [announcer 2] That's it!
- [cheering]
It's the start of taking
a big opportunity for Ed Cowan,
50 on Boxing Day!
[Ed] I had no idea where Virginia
or any of my family were at that moment
so I probably got
a little excited with Razor,
and I thought
I acknowledged the whole crowd
and at least I know I would have got
to them to some degree.
[Sam] Three days later,
Australia had won the game.
When it was over,
we saw Ed in the changing rooms.
Awesome!
[Sam] Ed Cowan was now a test cricketer,
and the struggle had been worth it.
Watching Ed's success, it was easy
to forget we had come to Australia
to investigate
whether test cricket was dying.
Do you want my hat off?
[Sam] Fortunately, most of cricket
were on hand to bring us back to earth.
- Here?
- Perfect.
- Am I looking at you, Sam?
- Yeah.
One, two, three, four.
I'm ready.
What are you asking me? I've forgotten.
- This isn't supposed to be serious, is it?
- [Sam] What?
I think test cricket is, dare I say it,
extremely vulnerable at the moment.
- Do you fear for test cricket's future?
- I do fear.
I fear for the importance
and the relevance of test cricket.
There probably is too much
international cricket, most definitely.
Short test series
that don't really mean anything.
I definitely do see crowds
not coming as they used to before.
The world's got faster, you know.
I think attention spans are shorter.
How do you get a 20-year-old
to come and watch five days?
People under 25 are dropping off cricket,
and under 15,
it's a vacuum, it doesn't exist.
[Sam] Of course,
this wasn't an entirely new story.
They'd said test cricket
was dead the day it was born,
that no one in Victorian England
had time for a game that took days.
140 years later, it was still going.
But cricket had been constantly
reinventing itself.
And the game's modern hinge point
had come in 2003...
[rock music playing]
...when cricket invented the latest shorter,
sexier format of the sport.
Twenty20 condensed
a five-day game into three hours
and if test cricket demanded
patience and concentration,
Twenty20 was full of big hits
and instant entertainment.
The public couldn't get enough
and Twenty20 was now played
in leagues around the world.
[song playing]
[Sam] Chief among them,
the Indian Premier League,
cricket's new zeitgeist.
[song continues playing]
[man] To see so many flags,
going right around the ground,
and hear them shouting your name,
"We want a six."
Okay, I'll give them a six.
- [announcer] Whoa.
- [crowd cheering]
[man] It's a great feeling,
going, going, going.
Gone. Beautiful.
- [laughs]
- [song continues playing]
[Sam] It seemed like cricket
was in the middle of an ideological war.
It was test cricket versus Twenty20.
[song ends]
[birds chirping]
[announcer] Down for 161 on the first day
of the 3rd Vodafone test match here
at the WACA ground in Perth.
You should have seen Ed Cowan
and David Warner go to the middle, gee...
[Sam] And in Australia, as Ed Cowan's
first test series continued,
we were seeing the battle
play out for ourselves.
Whereas Ed's defensive style
made him a traditional test cricketer,
his opening partner David Warner
had shot to fame in Twenty20.
Warner was aggressive and exciting,
and the crowds
and the advertisers loved him.
They wanna see 300 or 400
runs in a day, you know?
It is tough, it's test cricket.
You're gonna have to play your shots.
And people like to see that
and that's entertainment.
[crowd cheering]
[announcer] It's through .
Output shot. Watch four.
Ah, gee! What sort of shot is that?
I'll tell you what it is.
It's a huge shot!
He's gone long this time!
Is it there! Yes!
[Sam] While their contrasting styles
made for a good partnership,
it felt like Ed and Warner were competing
for the hearts and minds
of the cricketing public.
[announcer] Thank you.
That was some viewing.
- [Sam] Test cricket or Twenty20?
- Twenty20.
- Twenty20.
- Test cricket.
- [Sam] What do you think of David Warner?
- Very good.
- [Sam] Really?
- Epic.
He's gonna be a hero.
I think we settled into
a great combination.
- Amazing they were 150 after 23 overs.
- Incredible.
[man] Mr Warner, would it be okay
if I got your autograph?
Yeah, mate, no worries.
Could you write my name
on the opposite side, please?
Good footage for your movie.
At the end of the day, there's one bloke.
He's don't wanna get it,
he's doing one of these ones.
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!
The next thing you know,
he doing these ones.
Twenty20 and they're just doing
these ones, mate. That's shit.
You combine these ones with these ones.
- You'll never take away test cricket.
- Delicious.
[indistinct chatter]
[Sam] We didn't get it.
Warner and Ed
both still wanted to play test cricket
and the game
allowed both of them to succeed.
And if Warner and Twenty20
brought new fans with them,
was there really a problem?
The head of cricket in Australia
believed not, at least in his country.
In our part of the world,
test cricket's in fantastic shape.
I think we've seen
over the course of the last decade
a real re-emergence
of the strength of test cricket.
It would appear on the surface
that there are different,
and perhaps even greater challenges
in other parts of the world.
[Sam] So where should we turn to next?
Gideon Haigh, the most respected
cricket historian in the world,
was the perfect person
to give us our first lesson
in the arcane world
of cricket administration.
Could you outline for us
what the key problems with cricket,
- as you see them, are?
- [laughs]
It's the best I've got.
As one of the chief consumers.
I'd condense it into a question,
which I don't think
administrators have answered.
Which is that, um, does cricket
make money in order to exist
or does it exist in order to make money?
And I think that hitherto
the first has applied.
Increasingly, the second applies.
[Sam] So test cricket's problems
came back to one thing.
The satellite television boom had made
cricket richer than ever before,
but that money came largely from
the television-friendly shorter formats.
Test cricket only made money from games
involving cricket's three richest nations,
whose economies and populations
generated huge television revenues
and entrenched them
at the top of the game.
It's funny, you know,
the end of colonialism
was always meant to beget
or nurture democracy.
But in fact, what we have is
an increasingly oligarchic cricket state
run by two or three powerful nations
in cahoots with each other,
uh, forming alliances
as and when they see fit.
[Sam] It was a different story elsewhere
with the other seven test playing nations
virtually bankrupt.
One of these were the team
that had first helped me fall in love
with test cricket 25 years earlier.
West Indies had been
the best team in the world
for a generation until the mid-1990s,
but today, with a small population
and television audience,
they were unable to compete on or
off the pitch with the Big Three nations.
Just one example
of a modern cricketing subclass,
who increasingly struggled
to afford to play test cricket.
And cricket's richest countries
seem to have little interest
in playing against them either.
Occasionally, I may get two test matches
or three test matches
against the top team.
So where does that leave you
as one of the teams below?
So how are you gonna look at it now?
It's ridiculous, you know.
[Sam] With the Indian, English
and Australian administrators
organising more and more
lucrative matches between themselves,
West Indies had little option
but to play fewer test matches
and more of the more profitable,
shorter formats.
[man] What we are seeing,
the rest of the world
as far as the administrators
of the game are concerned,
don't care about West Indies cricket.
You hear a lot of talk around,
"World cricket won't be strong
until the West Indies are strong."
I don't think
the administrators feel that at all.
You know, world cricket will be strong
as long as we have plenty of money.
[Sam] It was clear
world cricket was in serious trouble.
So who were these administrators
and what were they doing to our game?
[Gideon] Well, the nature
of administration has changed quite a lot.
As cricket's become more lucrative
and more culturally significant,
it's attracted more and more politicos,
and they're not particularly interested
in people who are fans of the game.
[Sam] To help us understand
why these men would not support
the survival of test cricket worldwide,
Gideon directed us
right to the top of the game.
[Gideon] Have you thought
about doing Haroon Lorgat?
- [Sam] Yeah.
- [Jarrod] Yeah.
[Gideon] He'd be good.
Look, he's talkative at the moment
'cause he's fucking pissed off.
Do you wanna turn that off?
- There's an opening around here.
- I don't know. Where are we?
Their training finished at 5:00.
[Sam] Haroon Lorgat was the chief
executive of cricket's governing body,
the International Cricket Council,
which controlled television rights
contracts worth over a billion dollars.
It was easy to see
why Lorgat might be annoyed.
He was just a servant
to the members of the ICC board,
made up of the ten test playing nations.
Are you frustrated
when you can only push cricket so far?
In the sense that you've got to work
with the members is a challenge.
Um, it's frustrating in the sense
that we don't have executive authority,
uh, to do as we would like.
It means dealing with
each of the respective members.
There's challenge in that.
We've got to get together
to make the best decisions for the game
and that's not always easy.
[Sam] Lorgat's big problem was
the ICC's most powerful member,
the Board of Control for Cricket
in India, the BCCI,
whose potential TV audience
of 1.3 billion people
made them easily
cricket's richest country.
And with cricket's poorer nations
desperate for the television revenues
from India touring their country,
no one could afford to disagree with them.
The BCCI, rather than Lorgat,
controlled cricket.
[Haroon] I'm not concerned
about the strength of the BCCI.
What concerns me more is
about the weakness of other boards.
Um, I think governance
is impacted or affected
if you've got weak member boards.
[Sam] Those weak boards' only
other meaningful source of income
was their equal share of ICC revenues.
Now, though, cricket's richest board
was demanding a larger portion
of that money
and appeared to be blocking
Lorgat's attempts to reform world cricket.
He had announced he was retiring early,
but if we had hoped he would open up,
we were to be disappointed.
[Sam] Why are you leaving your position?
I think four years
is a long time in this role.
I feel that I've contributed in the manner
that I feel comfortable with
and I think I've done as best as I can
and it's perhaps a good time
for someone else to pick up.
[Jarrod] No wonder cricket's dying
if everyone just goes,
"Well, you know,
I can't say anything on camera,
but I can hint at the fact
that something might be wrong."
Just come out and say it.
If everyone comes out and says
something, maybe something will change!
[Sam] But as India lost
their third test match in a row,
others did start to voice their fears,
that the BCCI were no longer
interested in test cricket.
It actually means a lot because, you know,
we're a passionate cricket nation.
It means it's a case
of misplaced priorities.
It means you're not taking
test cricket seriously.
It means Twenty20 cricket
and One Day International cricket
is the be-all and end-all
of Indian cricket.
My question is
to the Indian Cricket Board,
is the Indian Cricket Board
interested enough in saying
test match cricket is our priority?
The actions have told us that it's not.
The Indians seem to be besotted
on Twenty20 cricket and the IPL,
so the current administrators have got
a huge obligation now
to see to it that cricket,
test cricket in particular,
maintains its status.
[chanting]
[man] Whoever wants to say anything,
they're most welcome to say it,
be my guest.
If India is powerful at the moment,
so be it.
You know, the others have to live with it.
- You have a problem with that?
- [Sam] No, not at all.
There was no way cricket could deal
with any of its problems
without proper governance.
This was no longer just a film
about test cricket.
It was just a pawn in a battle
for control of the whole game.
Everybody cowers at the feet
of the financial muscle held by India.
And India,
who have every right to run the game,
they want to run the game
and why shouldn't they run the game
if they generate
the greatest interest and income,
are not prepared
to be held responsible or accountable,
and so this extraordinary
circle of uncertainty
and lack of pastoral care continues.
[birds chirping]
[Sam] There was one final test to play,
and India would lose again.
[melancholic music playing]
Ed Cowan had had the summer of his life
and for all the problems we were seeing,
he was a reminder of the simple dreams
the sport was built on.
[indistinct chatter]
This is our final...
This is almost a farewell.
Johnny Farnham farewell tour.
What do you wanna know?
- [Sam] I want you to tell me how you feel.
- Tired.
Emotionally-drained,
but a very deep sense of satisfaction.
It's ten times, 50 times better than
what you could ever imagine.
It does feel like the start of something.
[Richie] One of the great characters
of Edward,
which you can get
right through the whole thing,
is he plays cricket for a team.
He's always played cricket for a team.
He's been taught to think like that.
You don't play to be famous.
You play because you want to win the game.
The teammates, not you.
[Sam] As we left Australia,
we were worried for the future of cricket
and that if test cricket died,
these values died too,
trampled in the pursuit
of money and power.
[Jarrod] "The laws which governed the game
100 years ago were in a very crude state."
This is a piece written
in 1887 about 1787.
[Sam] But back in London came
the bombshell cricket needed.
As a final act,
Haroon Lorgat had commissioned
the English judge Lord Woolf
to assess ICC Governance.
[Lord Woolf] I was asked by
the International Cricket Council
to have a look at their governance
because although
I'm certainly not an expert cricketer,
I do know about governance.
With regard to the conduct
of the players in the field,
there were rules in place to ensure that
they behaved in an appropriate manner.
But what applied
on the field to the players
didn't apply in the board-room.
They weren't governed
by any ethics as far as I could see.
And decisions were being made
with regard to large sums of money,
which didn't have in place
the sort of protections
which would normally exist
in your local club
or you'd expect
to exist in your local club.
[Sam] Woolf's report
called for independent governance
to sort out an organisation
fundamentally undermined by self-interest
and lacking basic accountability
and transparency.
It warned that cricket faced dire
consequences if this advice was ignored.
Surely the game had to listen.
So we went to see Giles Clarke,
the Chairman of English Cricket
and England's representative
on the ICC Board,
to ask him what he thought.
[Sam] Lord Woolf said in his report,
I quote,
"Cricket's a great game.
It deserves to have governance,
including management and ethics,
worthy of the sport.
This is not the position at present time."
- Do you agree with that?
- No, I don't.
Okay, he also said,
"Currently, the ICC reacts as though
it's primarily a members' club.
Its interest in enhancing the global
development of the game is secondary."
The question is, what is the ICC?
And Lord Woolf, in my judgement,
has yet to fully understand
what the ICC is.
He's entitled to his view.
I'm entitled to my view.
And as I've indicated, I don't think
it should be a members' club.
I think it should be run
for the benefit of cricket as a whole
rather than the interest
of individual members.
I've heard more nonsense described
to me as being something
that it's in the greater interest
of cricket.
What is the greater interest of cricket?
Because I'm very clear
on what cricket's needs
in this building and in this country are.
What is in the interest of cricket
is that the support surely provides
an exciting and dramatic spectacle
at international level,
where the contest is seen as being fair.
[Sam] Clarkes's background was running
pet shops and a wine business,
and here he was telling us
that a former Lord Chief Justice
knew nothing about governance.
The BCCI rejected Woolf's report too.
This seemed crazy,
but no one was surprised.
The Woolf report was calling for turkeys
to start voting for Christmas.
He was saying that the people
who run cricket are too powerful,
they should give their power away.
It's a turkeys and Christmas scenario.
They're not gonna vote themselves
out of power.
[Sam] Do you think we'll ever have
an independent ICC?
Uh, before or after hell freezes over?
Feels like fake snow.
[Sam] We were still no closer
to working out who was looking out
for cricket's best interests.
So, we needed to go and find the men
who are really running the game.
[horns honking]
[Sam] Our next stop was India.
A chance to see for ourselves
the country who so many in the West
were blaming
for all of cricket's troubles.
This was a country the British once ruled,
where cricket had been used
to spread the colonial ideal.
Things were very different now.
Modern India was like
1920s America on speed
on a fast track to modernity
as infrastructure and society
struggled to keep up.
Six! Six! Six!
[Sam] The one thing that united
this land of vast extremes was cricket.
And so it made sense that in three years
the IPL had become
a multibillion dollar brand,
in the process cementing India's status
as cricket's richest force.
- [man] ...two, one!
- [cheering]
[upbeat song playing]
In India they say three things sell:
cricket, religion and Bollywood.
And suddenly you have this mixture
of cricket and Bollywood coming together.
And the cocktail is so powerful,
it is maybe mega entertainment
for the average Indian.
[cheering]
[Sam] It was our first time
seeing it in the flesh,
and it was unlike any cricket
we'd ever seen before.
It was incredible.
- [announcer] Mumbai! Mumbai! Mumbai!
- [cheering]
[Sam] The IPL had been forced
into being by one man, one ego,
the aspiring Indian administrator,
Lalit Modi.
It's truly a momentous day for India
and for the great game of cricket.
You're going to be treated
to some of the most exciting sport
that this country has ever seen!
[marching band playing]
[man] His ambition and his passion
was incredible.
I don't think anybody could have managed
to do what he did.
[Sam] Modi was the son
of one of India's richest men
and came to cricket after spells
in television and marketing.
In Twenty20,
he spotted the perfect opportunity
to monetise the Indian market.
He gets stuff done.
The man is a genius at what he does.
Do you think it's fair to say
you don't need any more introductions?
- You're such a celebrity now.
- No, I'm not a celebrity but I can...
[man] I saw a very keen businessman,
one who truly comes from
a history of failed businesses
but everyone talks of
the other side to him, which I didn't see.
So I don't know if it exists.
It probably does.
I think this is a godsend,
and I think this is the best thing
that's ever happened to Indian cricket.
IPL doesn't compete with test cricket.
It competes with Bollywood.
It's mobilised a whole lot of people
who previously had never been to cricket.
So how can that possibly
be bad for cricket?
[Sam] Well, there was one problem.
Modi's model changed a not-for-profit
sport into a commercial free-for-all.
- [rock music playing]
- [announcer] 10:40 a.m...
[Sam] Generating huge amounts
of money for the BCCI in the process.
The IPL was contested
by privately owned franchises,
sold to mega rich celebrity owners
who spent huge sums of money
on signing the best players
from all around the world.
Number 17, Kevin Pietersen.
There's a lot of players out there
who can thank Lalit Modi
for making them very, very wealthy people.
[host] One million five hundred thousand...
[Sam] Cricket had never seen
sums like this before.
[host] One million
five hundred and fifty thousand...
You'll be playing international cricket
and you say, "Okay.
I'm getting 1,000 US
for an International One Day game."
And then when they look, they see
you're putting your teeth in the game,
and you get, like, 800,000.
No, that can't be real.
It's, uh, Eoin Morgan, the, uh, English...
[Chris] If you look at football,
all those guys have been paid,
it's big, huge business.
And then cricket changed
into a big, big business.
[Sam] The problem was the two-month
IPL season went up directly
against international cricket.
And with none of the smaller countries
able to match IPL wages,
players were forced to choose
between playing for their country
or earning vast sums of money.
[host] Anywhere else?
At the end of the day,
you only play this game for a short while,
so you gotta maximise your opportunities.
It's relative. We have been branded
as that sort of players
going after the money and stuff like that.
But you know, listen to me,
you have to face reality in life.
[cheering]
[Sam] And while we were in India,
this reality was being borne out
on the other side of the world.
Our friend Ed Cowan was playing
for Australia against a West Indies side
missing Gayle
and several of its other best players
because they were in India at the IPL.
[announcer] Top team's arrival with
Ed Cowan brought stability to the innings.
Cowan made his 50.
[Chris] You're not turning
your back on your country,
but it does present a perfect opportunity.
Deep down inside, I know I've accomplished
some tough things in test cricket.
[Sam] Seeing how much money
India were making,
many other countries
had started their own Twenty20 leagues,
further reducing the opportunities
for international and test cricket.
Back in London, we'd spoken to Tim May,
the players representative at the ICC.
[Tim] We know the players
will go to where the money is,
so if international cricket
really wants to survive
and along with it test cricket,
it needs to co-exist with these,
let's say, more fast growing,
more affluent leagues such as the IPL,
not conflict.
Otherwise, international cricket
won't be much of a...
a platform for the sport anymore.
It won't be the best against the best,
and that's what
international cricket should be.
[Sam] We'd seen for ourselves what this
meant the previous month in Sri Lanka.
As we'd seen for ourselves in Sri Lanka
the previous month.
You're watching
the Chuck Fleetwood-Smiths.
Today, I saw a silly short
forward point and I liked it.
Close on day four in Colombo,
good old-fashioned test cricket.
[band playing]
[Sam] Sri Lanka was a cricket mad country
where the board were $45 million in debt.
The few locals that did want to watch
test cricket were priced out of the ground
as the series shortened to nothing
so that players could go to the IPL.
Even we were struggling to see the point
of these smaller nations continuing
to play test cricket.
This was a system
that existed for three countries,
with everyone else kept alive
for convenience.
And yet despite this,
everybody insisted test cricket
remain the pinnacle of the game.
Fortunately, Giles Clarke was on hand
to tell us why we'd got it all wrong.
I think what you're doing, with respect,
is making a mistake of--
You're early stage in your journalistic
career and haven't seen how things work.
In these parts of the world, cricket is
the national sport and it will continue.
[Sam] Isn't that complacent to think
that cricket will continue
when the Sri Lankan attendances
of these games--
[Giles] No, it's not remotely complacent.
This game... I could give you...
The sort of nonsense you're spouting
comes straight out of wisdom 1909.
Straight from the editor's notes.
It's almost verbatim.
"The future of cricket is a dire problem."
That's 103 years ago.
[chanting]
[Sam] But whatever Giles said to us,
no one was immune.
The IPL cut across the English season too.
And back in 2008,
under pressure to match IPL wages
to keep his best players happy,
England's entrepreneurial chairman
saw an opportunity to prove
he could do things without India.
Texan billionaire Allen Stanford arrived
at Lord's with a suitcase of money
to make English cricket an offer
they couldn't refuse.
One night, one game, winner take all,
20 US million dollars.
So let me get this right.
If you win, $1 million per player.
- If you lose?
- Nothing. Absolute nothing.
I hated the concept of winner-take-all.
That was what really got me.
And that is not cricket.
It might be a silly old saying,
but you do not play cricket
for winner-take-all.
That is not what the fundamental
of cricket is about.
It's not the spirit of the game.
The old ways don't work anymore.
You've got to change.
You've gotta move into the 21st century.
You've gotta think entertainment.
Sports is entertainment, pure and simple.
[man] Let the party begin!
[upbeat song playing]
[Lawrence] England fell to pieces,
they got slaughtered
by the Stanford Superstars or All-stars,
or whatever they're called.
They lost by 10 wickets,
and actually probably
the right guys got the money in the end.
The guys who were less well off.
It then turned out that Stanford
was at the top of a great, big,
whacking Ponzi scheme,
and they'd been taking money off
a lot of people and ended up in prison.
And so that didn't work out too well
for the ECB.
[Sam] Will you ever shake
the Allen Stanford?
Me? Yeah, I absolutely... It's irrelevant.
I mean...
They...
It is a matter which had horrific
consequences for the West Indies,
a major funder of West Indies cricket,
let's not forget.
And for lots of people in the West Indies.
But, for us, it's history.
What were the circumstances that made
you think that Stanford was a good idea?
I don't talk about Stanford.
This interview wasn't about Stanford.
Well, the interview is about
the decisions people make.
You must understand
that Stanford might appear--
No, we're not. If...
You said this was about test cricket.
We'll talk about test cricket.
Okay, I won't harp on about it,
but it is about decisions
that administrators make
in order to fund test cricket as well,
in order to promote the game.
Surely you see that, at least part of it.
- Next question.
- Okay.
[Sam] Somehow, Giles Clarke survived.
But now his efforts to go it alone
had failed so spectacularly,
he had little option
but to try and align himself with India.
[Giles] Whether something's healthy
or unhealthy, you're dealing with reality.
Without the Indians being willing
to play so much away from India,
the situation for a lot of the boards
would be very serious indeed.
[cheering]
[Sam] Back at the IPL,
reality was inescapable.
Whatever the merits of test cricket,
it was Twenty20 that was driving
India's wealth and power.
Because test cricket is very boring
because of the defence.
It's boring! Totally.
Test cricket is for the elderly.
It's for our parents.
[cheering]
[Arun] The day is not far when I think
franchising cricket might take over.
Nobody's forced it down anybody's gullet.
It's what the people want.
It's what the reality is.
[cheering]
But I am no one to say that test cricket
must be preserved at all costs.
Eventually,
it'll be the people who'll decide.
[Sam] Arun Lal was right.
The people should decide.
Our fear was that
they wouldn't have the opportunity.
Because those running Indian cricket
were so blinded by the money
that they had forgotten what it was
that made cricket unique.
Twenty20 had not yet passed
the test of time,
and if this was the future,
our nagging question was:
Was it cricket or even sport?
Or was it entertainment?
Cynically constructed,
magnificently executed,
but entertainment nonetheless.
Because while sport endures,
entertainment shows get cancelled.
I could be watching Major League Baseball,
European Champions League football.
This is a smash. Smash, that's it.
Cricket's more about, like,
the sportsmanship,
the stuff that comes along with the game
more than the game itself.
Test cricket seems
to embody a lot more than this.
Maybe it doesn't have
those kind of intricacies,
um, that test cricket had,
that has endured almost 200 years.
So I fear that this might cannibalise
on test cricket
and then fade away on its own.
That's the basic problem.
[Sam] If Lal was right,
it wasn't just test cricket
but the whole sport that was under threat.
But before we could reach
any conclusions about cricket's future,
we had to understand
the motivations of the BCCI.
[Boria] There comes a time
when money ceases to be important.
And unless the BCCI is able
to be more socially responsible
and play a role
whereby cricket can go forward,
I think world cricket
and Indian cricket is entering a phase,
which is gonna be seriously problematic.
I think BCCI is right now
a reflection of India the nation,
in the sense that there is a,
there is the sense of grievance
which they have lost over years
and suddenly they have found the voice.
There's a feeling
that "we can't do any wrong".
[Sam] We had now begun to hear rumours
that India were preparing
to abandon world cricket
so that they could keep their vast
TV revenues for themselves.
[man] Indian cricket administrators
suspect strongly
that India is not getting
the full benefit of the profit
that the Indian game generates.
Then it might be better
if India just sort of went it alone.
I feel like the IPL was just
the warning shots.
If that means bad news
for test match or international cricket,
in the end, it won't mind that too much.
[Sam] All roads now led us
to one man, the president of the BCCI
and the most powerful man
in world cricket,
the cement magnet N. Srinivasan.
Everyone we'd spoken to
had told us we'd never get to him.
But it turned out that the man known
as the inscrutable leader
of an impenetrable empire
answered his mobile phone
like everyone else.
[Sam] Well, we were hoping--
It's really about the way that,
you know, the future of test cricket.
[N. Srinivasan] Your interview, are you
going to take pictures or just talk?
It would be a video interview
if that's okay.
It would be for a film.
[N. Srinivasan] All right, so when?
Or if you like, I can let you know.
Well, that's very kind, Mr Srinivasan.
I will be in touch and let you know.
- All right. Okay.
- Thank you very much. Okay, bye.
That was weird.
I wasn't expecting him to pick up--
We'll find out that
that's actually like T. Srinivasan.
[Jarrod] That's what I was thinking.
It's Paul Srinivasan.
He runs a carpet supply company
in Chennai.
So when-- What do we do now? Do we go to...
He's gonna be-- He's in Chennai?
Okay, flights to Chennai.
Flights. Mumbai to Chennai.
[Sam] N. Srinivasan was the man
responsible for a game
that was everything
to over a billion people.
[Boria] What you see out there in
the 22 yards is just not Indian cricket.
Indian cricket is also played
by the real political parties in India.
It's as political as it can be.
That's how important
the president of the BCCI is.
He's one of the biggest celebrities
in the country.
All of these things taken together,
Indian cricket is very serious.
It's very, very serious.
[Jarrod] Tell me that doesn't look
like Richie Benaud.
[Sam] Now we had an audience with him.
We intended to confront him
about why the BCCI felt no responsibility
to the global game.
[Sam] What do you think
the perception of BCCI is?
Well, I think the BCCI is
a very well-meaning organisation.
I'm not completely unhappy,
I'm not an ogre.
We have no interest to bring down,
you know, to hurt cricket in any way.
That-- That is, uh, incorrect.
IPL doesn't mean
we've lost focus on test cricket.
We believe in test cricket.
[Sam] When we turned to asking him
about the effect of the IPL
on world cricket,
we began to see
that inscrutability for ourselves.
[N. Srinivasan] The IPL has not really
affected that many players.
I think that...
To say that this is the reason
why test cricket is, you know,
players are not playing test cricket,
that I don't accept.
As far as the Woolf report is concerned,
I think first and foremost,
it starts out to say
ICC should own the game.
I don't agree.
And then now you want to say that
the person who provides you the money
should not have an automatic right
to sit on the board.
[Sam] How much of the ICC is politics?
[N. Srinivasan] We're all equal
when we sit at the table there.
We may have different points of view,
and we may have different
points of view on some issues but, uh,
that doesn't mean
there is politics there, no.
That I won't accept.
[Sam] We left with a warning.
To make sure our film
was fair and balanced
to those who were merely servants
of the game.
Srinivasan had proved
as evasive as we'd been warned,
and we never got to the bottom
of what was driving the BCCI
or Srinivasan himself.
[Sam] They don't own the game.
He was clearly doing it within an agenda,
and I failed that test.
We don't need administrators,
we need people with vision and guts
and determination.
[Sam] Because Srinivasan's position
at the head of the BCCI
contained a serious conflict of interest.
N. Srinivasan,
he runs a company called India Cements.
Yet, he's now also the secretary--
Sorry, president of the board
and runs an IPL team.
Isn't that a conflict of interest?
And he changed the rules.
They changed the constitution
so that Mr Srinivasan
could actually buy a franchise.
[Sam] In 2008, Srinivasan's company,
India Cements Limited,
had purchased one of
the eight original IPL franchises,
the Chennai Super Kings.
[woman speaking indistinctly]
It meant the man who could decide
the future of test cricket
stood to benefit financially
from the tournament
that threatened it the most.
So, were Srinivasan's personal interests
influencing BCCI decisions?
We had to speak to the one man
who knew him better than anyone,
his former ally,
and BCCI colleague Lalit Modi.
By 2010, the cult of Modi had become
too big for Srinivasan to ignore.
[Boria] The BCCI used him
when he was at his best.
He was the marketing tsar
who could do no wrong.
And then once he became
too big for his boots perhaps,
he was becoming the face of IPL,
it was a tournament synonymous
with Lalit Modi and not the BCCI,
the BCCI pushed him aside.
[woman] After the IPL final, where Chennai
beat Mumbai and won the end last night,
the BCCI then emailed a 34-page
charge sheet against Lalit Modi
listing 22 charges of impropriety
ranging from financial irregularities
to rigging bids.
[Sam] Do you think that the IPL would have
existed without Lalit Modi?
I think the IPL has grown and is better
and there's no controversy now.
[Sam] So you're saying he was the reason
that there was controversy before?
I don't want to-- No.
I don't want to give importance
to Lalit Modi and talk about him.
[man] How does Lalit Modi go
from being hero number one
to suddenly public enemy number one
in the BCCI?
It's just part of life, you know.
I've been public enemy for a long time.
[indistinct]
[man] Mr Modi,
are you confident to come back?
Come back? I'm not going anywhere.
[Sam] Claiming to have received
threats to his life,
Modi had fled the country for London
as the world he'd helped to build
carried on without him.
So now, we headed back to London, too,
in search of the man we hoped
would shed some light
on what Srinivasan was up to.
[Lalit] I love the IPL. Well, I created it
and nobody can take that away from me.
There are many allegations against me
and, um, not a single one proved
two years down the line,
I'm fighting it
and I'm convinced that it's all political.
And I will fight it going forward.
And Mr Srinivasan,
the less said the better.
[Sam] Instead of talking about Srinivasan,
what Modi wants to tell us about
was how he was
the potential saviour of test cricket.
[Lalit] The players who play test cricket
are the ultimate players of cricket.
T20 should be there to supplement it
and to subsidise it to a certain extent
but bring the fans back into the game.
[Sam] This was a remarkable turnaround
from the creator of the IPL,
but we couldn't underestimate
the one administrator
who had proved he knew
what the fans wanted.
[Lalit] We, as cricket administrators,
our job is to promote the game
and build the fan base,
and this is what people forget.
Our job is not only to get the money.
Money will come if you just keep the fans.
So the key and the fundamental issue
is don't lose your focus on the fan.
Always have the fan at the centre
of anything that you do.
At the end of the day,
you've got to find ways and means
to enhance the game,
and the politics should play
a secondary role.
[Sam] The problem
for world cricket and its fans
is that politics does play a role.
There are 105 countries who play cricket,
but only ten are allowed
to play test cricket,
and they take the majority of ICC funds.
Meaning the others, including several
of the biggest economies in the world,
are starved of the opportunity
for development.
[reporter] The NYPD Cricket League
plays a modified version
of the sport called Twenty20,
which is 20 overs per side
and more popular in the United States.
[Sam] China, for example,
only received 30,000 pounds annually
to grow the game
in a country of 1.4 billion people.
There is, though,
a potential answer to this problem,
using Twenty20
to take cricket to the Olympics.
[man] What the Chinese government
told me was that
once it becomes an Olympic sport,
then the amount of funding
we get from our government
is going to be so large
it will pay for everything.
But just get us to a stage
where it becomes an Olympic sport.
[Sam] Olympic status would see
the Chinese government
pledge up to 20 million US dollars a year
to the development of cricket.
You reach out to China,
you reach out to over a billion people.
Even if out of those one billion people,
ten percent play cricket,
that's a hundred million people.
That's what it's about.
And that's what should be
the role of sport.
It's to bring pleasure
to hundreds of people, thousands,
and this gets to millions of people.
[Sam] China are just one of many countries
who would benefit
from cricket's Olympic inclusion.
So what did the ICC think
about cricket in the Olympics?
What do you think of cricket
in the Olympics?
Uh...
I think it's a tournament for too far.
The Olympics takes place
during the English season.
It's impossible for us
to set aside time for it.
It would have an enormous economic
impact on the game in this country.
It's a complete non-starter.
[Sam] But you can see how it could appear
to be an example of the board
putting its own thoughts first rather than
the game as a whole,
in terms of--
I have every right to put
my board's interests first.
[Sam] The sport we love
was shrinking before our eyes.
[Gideon] How many sports in the world
are actually contracting,
are actually trying to diminish the number
of countries that play at its top level?
That just seems to be cutting off
your nose to spite your face.
[Sam] And as nobody was interested
in doing anything to help cricket,
it was time for drastic action.
In terms of getting the whistle-blower,
and stuff like that.
Is that something
that you'd be prepared to talk about?
[Sam] I quit the Chuck Fleetwood-Smiths
to finish the film and get it out there.
This was taking over my life.
Jarrod remained on the inside with his ear
to the ground for developments.
It's not about cricket. It's about life
and it's about things that people love.
Most cricket fans have no idea
that their game is basically being
strangled by the three major nations.
[Sam] Then things started
to get strange for both of us.
We'd released a trailer to raise money
featuring a picture
of Giles Clarke and Allen Stanford,
and it seemed it hadn't gone unnoticed
as Jarrod's press pass
was mysteriously withheld.
At a meeting at Giles Clarke's office,
Jarrod's boss was asked to explain
what we were doing with this film.
Clarke also wrongly alleged that Jarrod
had racially abused an ICC employee.
All we'd wanted to do was make
a film about test cricket.
Now we'd wandered
into a 70s paranoid thriller.
where our careers
and reputations were at stake.
An ex-member of the ICC
told us we'd be making things worse
for ourselves if we carried on.
As interviews we had been promised
were withdrawn,
others, scared about repercussions,
wouldn't come on camera.
Things were getting murkier by the day.
For the first time in my life,
cricket no longer felt like a game.
It exists mainly
for the interests of broadcasters, uh,
advertisers,
entrepreneurial administrators,
uh, elite players,
corporate investors and sponsors.
Uh, and the fan?
The fan, where he's considered a tool,
is there to be monetised
and to be exploited.
[Sam] But just as we were losing faith,
came a reminder
of what we were fighting for.
[announcer 1] They've thought about
a field change.
There are now two men out on the boundary.
There's the back foot again and wow!
Cut nicely. He's looking good, Ed Cowan.
[announcer 2] He's really putting it
at the moment.
[announcer 1] There's another
beautiful bat from Cowan.
He's gonna need a couple individuals
to stand out in a test.
It just might be Ed Cowan.
He's getting himself going.
He's done it!
Ed Cowan fulfils the final dream.
The moment that will live with him
for the rest of his life.
[announcer 2] Imagine what's going through
Ed Cowan's head.
Imagine all the hours and hours,
the hard yards,
the training sessions, the net practices,
the coaches, the advice,
the thought processes, the move,
the decision to go to Tasmania...
and then finally,
the realisation of that dream.
[Sam] Back in London,
as a new year dawned,
we had a breakthrough of our own.
As one of the sources we'd been
chasing finally agreed to talk to us.
David Becker had been
head of Legal Affairs at the ICC
and a key ally of Haroon Lorgat,
but had quit his post in 2012,
disillusioned
at how cricket was being run.
He wasn't keen to go on the record yet,
but finally, this was a credible source
giving legitimacy
to all the rumours we'd heard
about how Srinivasan and his lackeys
were controlling world cricket.
Now we weren't alone.
And in search of an ending
to our investigation,
off we went again, this time,
to the new home of cricket, Dubai.
Ten years previously, reflecting
the shift of power from west to east,
the ICC had moved from Lord's to Dubai,
where conveniently,
attractive tax concessions were on offer.
Their headquarters stood
in Dubai Sport City,
a half-built monument
to an era of global excess.
This was where the most powerful men
in cricket met
to decide the future of the game.
And we were here to see it for ourselves.
But we had to find them first.
That actually doesn't look unlike it.
It says ICC on it,
so that should narrow it down.
That one over there?
[Sam] Because no one knew where these
meetings happened, or what was said.
There was no press conference,
no agenda, no published minutes
to explain decisions worth billions of
dollars that affected billions of people.
And as David Becker explained later,
India, with the help of England
and Australia,
were regularly manipulating votes
at the ICC board table.
[David] As head of Legal,
I was responsible for
overseeing all the legal aspects
of international cricket.
2012, it became obvious
that decisions amongst the key powers,
particularly the Big Three,
were being made in the corridors
and being presented to the ICC board.
You became aware
that there was a pattern emerging.
These proposals which were ostensibly
in the best interest of the game
were being rejected.
It then occurred to me that either
I try and implement from the inside
some of these changes
that emanated from the Woolf report
or I leave the organisation,
and I chose the latter.
[Sam] Back on the trail of the meeting,
we got a tip-off.
Yeah. It looks like he's staying
at the Marriott. There is a few Marriotts.
Do you know if there's an international
cricket meeting at your hotel?
It is, excellent.
[Sam] In the best traditions
of investigative journalism,
we found ourselves
a fake sheikh and headed on in.
We knew we wouldn't be welcome,
but we had to pierce
this ridiculous secrecy
and ask Srinivasan and Clarke
one question:
Why was cricket shrinking on their watch?
Send Ahmed out onto the roof.
Send Ahmed out onto the roof,
do you reckon?
Ahmed, can you go out onto the roof, mate?
Unfortunately, our sheikh hadn't charged
his camera battery,
but soon the main men started arriving.
Peter Chingoka,
head of cricket in Zimbabwe
and right-hand man to Robert Mugabe.
Then, a familiar face arrived.
Giles? Hello.
Go away!
[Sam] We waited all day,
but the closest we got to answers
was a press officer.
We just want to ask one question.
We've been investigating this film
for two years.
Everything comes back to this meeting.
We have one question,
which just comes down to--
It comes down
to transparency and accountability.
Sonny, this isn't heads of state.
This is cricket.
- If you are recording all this.
- I'm sorry?
If you are doing this,
I'll be very, very unhappy.
Can you-- Can you...
- Sir, sir.
- No.
[Sam] When it was over,
we felt like we'd blown it.
We'd come all this way and got nothing.
But even we couldn't have imagined
what was really going on
behind the scenes that day.
It wouldn't be long before we found out
that things were far worse
than we had ever suspected.
First, one of Srinivasan's opponents
and a vocal supporter of the Woolf report,
players representative Tim May was
swept aside from his position at the ICC
as the BCCI pressurised national boards
to get their candidate
elected in his place.
[Tony] Um, we are aware of the fact
that the captains have come under
pressure not to vote for Tim May.
[Tim] There was pressure put on them
that if they didn't vote
for that particular candidate,
that tours would be taken away
or India would not tour
those particular countries.
[Sam] When were they told that,
who were they being told that by?
By their boards.
By their individual boards who obviously
were feeling the pressure from BCCI.
[Sam] May's replacement, Laxman
Sivaramakrishnan, was from India,
a country that didn't recognise
player unions.
[Tim] This is just exactly
how cricket runs
and major decisions being made at the ICC
are being made.
Just the outcomes are a function
of threat and intimidation.
[Sam] And Sivaramakrishnan
just happened to hold
an interesting link to Srinivasan.
[Boria] Sivaramakrishnan
is an employee of India Cements.
So if someone comes and says,
"Oh, there is a direct connection between
Mr Srinivasan and Sivaramakrishnan", yes.
[Sam] But cricket's night
of the long knives was not over yet.
Next in Srinivasan's sights
was Haroon Lorgat,
who was back in cricket as
chief executive of Cricket South Africa.
The BCCI were quick
to make their disapproval known.
[Haroon] I believe I've done everything
I possibly could.
But we shouldn't be naive about
the influence that people have.
As far as Haroon Lorgat,
we have differed on issues.
Several times. But it's nothing personal.
[Sam] To punish South Africa
for appointing Lorgat,
the BCCI threatened to hit them
where it hurt, their TV revenues.
In a development boarding on the absurd,
the BCCI has reportedly threatened
to pull out of the tour to South Africa
later this year.
[Sam] Eventually,
India settled for a shortened tour,
costing South African cricket
tens of millions of dollars.
The ICC and the rest of cricket
just stood and watched.
To David Becker, the ICC were ignoring
a binding agreement to the tour.
[David] I was quite startled by this.
Any company that passes a board resolution
is required to act in accordance
with that board resolution and enforce it.
Otherwise, it acts contrary
to principals of corporate law.
It acts illegally.
[Sam] At this point,
Becker released a public statement,
putting his career on the line
for his principles.
[David] I felt it was very important
to come out,
particularly at that juncture.
If an organisation was not prepared
to uphold and enforce its own resolutions,
it was a significant issue
for the game of cricket.
There's no doubt
that those within the game
are very frightened about speaking out.
These are very powerful people
who run cricket.
[Sam] The message
to the rest of cricket was clear.
Don't cross N. Srinivasan.
But not everyone was intimidated.
I've just had a chat with Lalit Modi.
He seems to be allowing us to spend
some time with him, observing him.
He-- He is, um...
I don't know what to make of him yet.
I think Lalit could hold the key
to the whole film basically
because he is the one guy.
He knows every--
He knows where the bodies are buried.
[Sam] Whether we trusted Modi or not,
we were now united by a common cause.
And he agreed to meet us
at his Mayfair club.
How are you?
Did you see the email I sent you?
The name is Giles Clarke at ECB?
Clarke at ECB.
Somebody emailed me the document.
I'm not gonna ask him
where he got it from.
I have an open invitation...
[Sam] Modi showed us emails
he claimed were one example
of how India, England and Australia
were colluding to control the ICC Board.
It's basically three or four people
and how they manipulated over the years
uh, their plan of fixing the ICC...
[stammers]
...as their own personal domain
and how they have encroached
upon the good governance
disappeared to the game,
and it's important to expose that.
[Sam] But even Lalit Modi didn't seem
to have a silver bullet.
Modi's reforming zeal
might have been encouraged
by the troubles
of his nemesis back in India.
[man speaking in Hindi]
[Sam] As Srinivasan's IPL team,
the Chennai Super Kings,
became embroiled in a match fixing scandal
that led right back to Srinivasan's door.
The Mumbai police
is likely to question Guru Meiyappan
who's the son-in-law of Chennai
Super Kings' owner N. Srinivasan...
[Sam] Srinivasan's son-in-law, in charge
of running the Chennai Super Kings,
was caught placing illegal bets and
tipping off bookies about team selection.
Suddenly, Srinivasan's empire
appeared to be crumbling.
I have done nothing wrong.
I have no intension to resign.
I mean, I cannot be bulldozed
or railroaded into resigning.
[Boria] Now, cricket, at the end
of the day, is a gentleman's game, right?
There is a degree of morality.
Mr Srinivasan and Guru Meiyappan
are implicated in the whole saga.
Mr Srinivasan not directly,
but being BCCI president and
the father-in-law of Guru Meiyappan,
should have stepped down.
And Guru Meiyappan, having betted,
has brought the game of cricket
into disrepute.
There is no two ways about it.
[clamouring]
[Sam] The first to put the boot in
was of course Lalit Modi.
Nothing happens in the BCCI or in the IPL
or the ICC, as a matter of fact,
without the stamp of Mr Srinivasan.
What I created can't be taken away.
Yes, I'm responsible partly
for Srinivasan's rise.
Mr Modi, how much of responsibility
would you yourself take tonight?
I take full responsibility for the fact
that, um, that I created a monster.
Cricket is going through a turmoil,
and turmoil not because of the product
but because of the administration.
Do you know what the quantum
of betting is today?
Two billion dollars a game.
And when you talk about
two billion dollars a game,
you're talking about a whole new economy.
For the first time,
we are seeing family members
of cricket administrators and boards
betting and match fixing.
We don't know where it stops.
What is the biggest taboo in
the corporate world? It's insider trading.
In insider trading business,
you're playing with money.
And it's greed,
and it's to do with adults.
In the case of sport,
it reaches down to our children.
It reaches down to everybody,
and it's to do with the emotions.
It is going to destroy the game
and all forms of the game.
[Sam] Modi was screaming
from every media platform available,
but no one was listening.
Somehow, Srinivasan clung onto power
in those months that followed.
How was a mystery to us.
At least until we took a step back
and had a look at the world
he'd created for himself.
Everywhere you look in cricket,
there is an India Cements employee
or someone
who owes something to Srinivasan.
The current captain of India, MS Dhoni
is also vice president of India Cements,
the captain of Chennai Super Kings.
Where does this whole thing stop?
It's not so much that
he's running the game.
He's become the alpha and the omega
of the game. He's the very centre of it.
You can't dig him out
because he is cricket at this point.
At this stage, any committee
to get rid of him, he'd be on.
The only people who could stand up to him
and try to get rid of him
have got too much to lose
if it goes wrong,
which makes you question
what their motivations are.
You can't be involved with Srinivasan
at this point
and not be tainted with that brush.
I mean, everyone knows what he's doing.
It's now out in the open.
There's been newspaper articles,
there's been supreme court trials,
everything that you need to know
that there is something going wrong
and that he's not running
cricket correctly.
What we're talking about is businessmen
willing to do absolutely anything
to keep hold of unpaid positions,
running a not-for-profit sport.
It doesn't make sense.
For Srinivasan, he is actually making
money out of the Chennai Super Kings.
On top of this, you've got money
being made from an illegal cricket string
that links directly back to him.
So what is actually happening?
Is this on paper?
Is there an actual reason
why he's so desperate to keep his power
and he just wants it so bad?
Why are these men
so desperate for this power of cricket?
What are they getting out of it
that we're not understanding?
[Sam] But just as we were piecing
this all together
and trying to get our film completed,
suddenly, the endgame all became clear.
The BCCI has given a green signal to
a proposal that will give three countries,
that's India, Australia and England,
more power and more money.
While the BCCI claims that this move
is for the betterment of the game,
it could just end up
destroying world cricket as we know it.
[Sam] In January 2014,
it emerged that India,
England and Australia
had been working in secret for over a year
on a series of dramatic reforms
for world cricket.
These were fundamental changes
to cricket's governance.
They just happened
to be the exact opposite
of what Lord Woolf had recommended.
[reporter 1] ...meaning the BCCI and
N. Srinivasan will take central leadership
of all international cricketing affairs.
[reporter 2] The draft also proposes
a new financial model
with the Big Three
set to have the lion's share.
[Sam] India, England and Australia
had awarded themselves
over 50% of ICC revenues.
The money would come from funds
previously allocated
to the smaller test nations
and the development of the game.
Have you seen the Dhoni email about this?
N. Srinivasan would become
the new Chairman of the ICC
and effectively head
cricket's anti-corruption unit.
When several boards objected,
it was made clear
that if agreement was not reached,
India would walk away
from international cricket.
Now, the position paper appeared set
to be forced through in Dubai.
This time, there would be at least be
a press conference.
We had one final trip to make.
[Lord Woolf] I'm very disappointed.
I would hope that cricket would not
have adopted the attitude that it has
to putting its house in order.
[Lalit] England, Australia and India said,
"Trust us."
It's a power grab and a money grab.
And that's all it is.
I think Mr Putin
would be very proud of them.
It's like they want to be
superpowers of the world.
If it is agreed,
cricket will only be played
in the subcontinent and nowhere else.
Mr Srinivasan will stab them.
[Lord Woolf] If you dine with the devil,
it's said you should use a long fork.
[Sam] The vote would be a formality.
The takeover of the game wasn't
in the shadows anymore.
It was part of cricket's new constitution.
A sport that used to belong to all of us
was now theirs.
For India, England, and Australia,
winning had clearly become everything.
Ownership and dominance,
more important than expanding the game
or a fair and even contest.
This was far bigger than us
versus Srinivasan or Clarke
or even test cricket versus Twenty20.
This was about a whole game.
That idiot Sam's out there!
[Sam] Because the many people
around the world
who lived, breathed and funded cricket
deserved better.
And as we sat there in Dubai
and watched it all unfold,
with the culprits nowhere to be seen,
we realised that while our questions
may have made no difference,
at least we had recorded the whole story
so that all those other fans
could see for themselves
how those charged with cricket's survival
seemed hell-bent on its destruction.
To be truthful, it had much authority.
[Ed] When we first came into camp
for the Ashes series,
it felt like the apex of months of work.
The biggest moment of your career,
an Ashes tour away from home.
It felt like everything had gone to plan,
and that was the moment.
But a change of coach?
There was a different feeling around of
you're under pressure,
you're playing for your sport.
I was batting at a net with Dave Warner,
which clearly was a bat-off,
and I probably had the greatest
net session I've ever had.
It just felt like
everything was coming together.
I was playing well,
my head was in a really nice spot.
And then...
[announcer] Ed Cowan has come out,
so it's another left-hander.
So two left-handers at the crease.
The average is 32. Thirty-one years old.
And listen to the crowd now,
as Finn from the end...
And I saw the ball
and what I thought was a full toss.
You know, just hit a full toss.
[announcer] ...runs in and bowls to Cowan.
It drives! And he's caught a slip.
And Finn's got a hat-trick!
Cowan's out first ball
and listen to that noise.
And you sort of look behind.
What have I done?
Oh, he's caught it.
[announcer] Oh, what a remarkable day.
I have to go now? What do you mean?
[announcer] As Cowan chases
a horrible shot I'm afraid,
for a number three batsman.
He'll hate looking at that again.
Why did he play that? Nerves, pressure?
Goodness knows what.
That was a poor shot.
I was just about to say that Ed Cowan's...
And then the trudge back was like,
"This can't be happening.
This is an absolute nightmare."
I was just so angry.
Angry that I'd let myself down,
angry that I'd let my team down.
[Mark] Test matches do things
that strip a man to the bone.
They bare your soul. They...
If you're-- If you're below standard
in test cricket,
you're exposed as in no other sport.
[Sam] Do you feel that
the Australian public judge you now?
Uh, interesting question.
Yeah, they probably have.
[Sam] What do you think they think of you?
Not good enough.
Good Aussie battler,
star cricketer, but not good enough.
[Gideon] I can't see a purpose to cricket
without test matches.
Just as I can't see a lot of purpose
to literature if it's only haiku.
Uh, its...
It exists.
T20 needs something to be shorter than.
There's something
about the epic scope of test cricket
that you would not create now,
that is kind of unique to it,
that can never be built again.
And once it's lost,
it can never be replaced.
And we will feel its absence
when it's gone.
[N. Srinivasan] The ICC is like
a large family...
and humbled by this opportunity
to provide leadership to the ICC,
to provide I think
a more financially stable...
financial position to full members,
associates and affiliates
and also take steps to take cricket...
to all parts of the world.
No one is going to buy a newspaper
or turn on a television programme
to watch a good news story
about administration in sport.
Uh, people aren't interested
and why should they be?
We perform these roles unpaid,
don't forget,
and it's very time-consuming,
because we love the game.
We're interested in the game.
We care about it.
There will be a time when we will see
everything starting to...
"I told you so."
Not I told you. "I warned you so."
I've been trying to tell you
again and again and again,
and I keep harping about the same thing
again and again,
because I see
how detrimental it is to the game.
Because I love the game.
Not for any other reason.
Somebody other than me
would have probably walked away.
I have done nothing wrong.
There is no charge of wrong.
I mean I have not done anything wrong
for which I should feel that hesitant
to take this position.
There comes a time in every man's life
where they need to stand up
for the things they believe in.
I believe in the governance of the game.
I believe in the integrity of the game,
and I believe it's been compromised.
What matters to us is that
the team are properly written about.
The team is what people are interested in.
The national team, the county teams.
That's what people follow. That's
what people should be interested in.
We hope that we can bring back
the good gentleman's game back,
but not only in the playing field,
but also in the board-rooms.
I can't accept
that cricket has an image problem.
You know,
there may have been some instances,
rare instances, few and far between.
But I think almost all cricket is
very competitive and very fair, hard work.
[Sam] What do you hope
for the future for Ed?
I hope he enjoys his cricket,
does as well as he can,
and, uh, when it's over, it's over.
You can kick and scream and whinge
or you can get on with it.
I could be a lot worse off.
I'm very lucky, I'm healthy.
Happily married.
I have a beautiful daughter.
I poured all my energy
into playing cricket.
Yeah! Yeah!
[laughs]
It has felt like
I've given it my best shot.
[Tony] It's a great leveller.
It's pretty true to life.
You can think
that you're brilliant one moment,
and the next minute
you're out the first ball for nought.
Seems to me
to be a bit of a character builder.
Yay! Hooray!
[Tony] And I think you're better off
for the hurdles that you get over
as a result of playing a game.
- [laughing]
- [Ed speaking indistinctly]
[Sam] Would you do that again?
Yeah. In a heartbeat.
When I was a young kid,
growing up in school,
when people were asked,
"What do you want to do when you grow up?"
And I just said,
"I want to be a test cricketer."
It's the only life I've known.
You know, we react quickly now so that
we safeguard and protect test cricket.
It just needs us
to support it and work with it.
[Gideon] I'll tell you
where cricket is in 20 years.
It's out there,
'cause I'm still playing it.
It's the players' game.
And they'll take me out of here in a box
'cause I think
it's the best game in the world.
[classical music playing]