What does the man on the street want?

I reckon I would go to watch Sachin and Shane play cricket long before I would walk down the street to buy a newspaper which gave details of what the pompous call “the governance” of ICC, writes Ted Corbett.

It applies to both the Kevin Pietersen story and to the many and varied changes being made to the constitution of ICC. The ordinary guy in the street, clutching his entrance money, does not give a damn about the technicalities so long as he can watch the star players perform at their best.

That is why that same man will not care whether ICC is controlled by the Big Three, the little bear or Goldilocks. He will be pleased that MCC, a wiser, older, more dignified body have invited Sachin Tendulkar to captain their team for the bicentenary match at Lord’s and Shane Warne to lead the Rest of the World.

MCC have been paying attention to the real world. They have noted the adoration of Sachin and that Warne is a far shrewder cricketer than many of those who have been appointed captain of their country while he was left on the outer.

So Sachin is now dreadfully old; so Warne, who is even older, smoked cigarettes after promising to give them up. So he had a few bookmakers listed on speed dial, so he has had — and may still have — the undivided attention of a beautiful film star.

I reckon I would go to watch Sachin and Shane play cricket long before I would walk down the street to buy a newspaper which gave details of what the pompous call “the governance” of ICC.

That sort of stuff does not feel personal to me. Tendulkar’s pulled drive, his late cut and his leg glance wake me up to the charm of cricket; I cannot wait to get another glimpse of the Warne shuffle to the crease, his powerful wrist giving the ball its curve and, oh please God, produce a delivery like the one that bowled Mike Gatting all those years ago.

I can dream about the cricketers. I cannot waste a moment of my life thinking whether BCCI or SLC have control of the purse strings. It is not what I want from cricket, a game that appeals on so many levels, that enthuses the man so disabled that he can never hope to feel bat on ball and the super athlete from, for instance, baseball or football, or tennis who thinks “I can conquer cricket; a game for the weak” and when he tries it finds that there is more to it than he imagined.

So, for me and thousands like me, the message to ICC is to make the best arrangements they can for their future — but please try to leave the game in the hands of good men like those who exercise their wisdom at MCC — and we will get on with our natural inclination to watch the real stars.

I have loved this contrary, difficult, idiosyncratic game since I was 12, playing in the schoolyard next to my home in the Dales of Yorkshire. I made no conquest of it as a player and when people ask me if I played I often reply that I was the worst cricketer in any team I played for.

I learnt enough to see the difficulties faced and to admire those who performed as I wished I could.

That is why I am angered and amazed and distraught at what has been done to Pietersen. Yes, I know he is a strange one, that he speaks when he should keep quiet and that he is generally an imperfect human being; but I defend his right to be no ordinary Joe, to rant if that is how he feels and to be sullen and discontented if he loses a job he must have wanted so desperately.

Great men, be they composers, artists, sportsmen or doctors, are often wayward, difficult to handle and cantankerous. They find it difficult to admire those who cannot hope to achieve what they think comes naturally.

I had a long relationship with Fred Trueman, a rough kind of a guy, who also spoke before he thought. I loved him because he could produce sentences like this — “I hear that Yorkshire’s new bowlers are finding it difficult to get wickets. Why don’t they pitch the ball leg stump and hit to top of the off. I found very few batsmen could play that one.”

No, dear departed Fred, and very few bowlers could guarantee to produce that ball as often as you did.

KP could conjure up that sort of miracle too and yet, those who could not manage him have decided he must go. I am not sure, whether his runs have dried up completely. If they have England have got their decision right.

It has now been decided that neither side can explain what has gone wrong until October. How incredibly, mind-bogglingly, foolish.

Do those who have drawn up this agreement imagine that of the many first-class cricket reporters who follow the game regularly will not attempt — and the modern world provides fair means and foul — to get round this decision.

ICC have already been taught this lesson. They tried to keep their decisions secret and failed. The English authorities tried to keep their ruling on KP secret and failed just as dismally. There is no such thing as a news blackout in politics, in sport or in business although reporters often help the police when secrecy is important.

Otherwise it is always in someone’s interest to tell the tale the way it is and I believe we will know the truth about the goings on in the England dressing room long before October. It will not be guesswork either.