Haroon Lorgat Members? Forum speech

Members of the ICC, My family, friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning

Thank you for affording me this extraordinary privilege to influence our great game of cricket, and with it the taxing responsibilities that goes with it!

Thank you to the ICC Executive Board for its show of confidence in me. Be assured that over the coming years I will seek to repay that faith in me.

You’ve now given me the responsibility to help direct our great game into a future with much expectation and promise.

For those of you who don’t know me, I hail from the Southern tip of Africa and from my humble and disadvantaged beginnings I am truly proud of standing here before you today…. and to think from where I come we were not even allowed to dream of this kind of a posting.

I have to admit that I draw my inspiration from my role model…. a role model for many of us... Nelson Mandela. Just last week he celebrated his 90th birthday in London and talked about “new hands” .. Not surprisingly I have again borrowed from him to say to you that the time is ripe for “new hands” at the ICC.

So here I am… and I have to tell you it’s a great honour to stand before you as the new Chief Executive of the ICC.

Getting here has been a roundabout route and a hard one too. (And I’m not referring to my appointment!). I had to seek ministerial consent to attend Rhodes University, which was reserved in those days for whites only. And just a few years back I was doing 2 jobs – By day I was a senior partner at Ernst & Young and by night I was a cricket administrator.

I hope that illustrates that I am focused, determined and no stranger to hard work. I can promise you I will be working very hard to ensure we get the results we deserve in a strong sport growing stronger.

Let me take this opportunity to express thanks to my predecessor in this role – Malcolm Speed.
He has in the past seven years grown the organisation not only in size but also in its influence and value across the cricket world. Thank you and Good luck to him as he moves on in his life.

…Two other senior members of ICC staff are also on the move very soon – Faisal Hasnain, our Chief Financial Officer, and Vasi Naidoo, our senior counsel and company secretary.
They, too, have played pivotal roles in ensuring you, the members, are well-served. It is always sad to lose talented people but they have been presented with excellent opportunities and they go with our best wishes and our heartfelt thanks.

And Whilst I’m at it… may I take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank the management team and staff at ICC, who under the capable guidance of David Richardson (who incidentally hails from the same birth place as I do), took care of matters during a difficult period of transition. Thank you David.

Now, with new hands on board,… it is indeed a time for us to be excited and to look forward.
Why? Well, for starters have a look at this video, which is from our last major event, the ICC World Twenty20 2007, which took place in South Africa last September.

(DVD)

So, you can see why I feel so fortunate and so excited to be the new Chief Executive Officer.

Major events like the one in South Africa are one reason amongst many reasons to be excited.

Participation is at an all-time high in all our members at all levels… whether we talk:

1.The ICC World Cricket League (where just a month ago Afghanistan beat Jersey in Division 5, and now progress to the tournament in Division 4 in Tanzania in Nov, with an opportunity to progress all the way to the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2011)

2.Women’s cricket has never been stronger with the staging of the ICC Women’s World Cup in Australia next year and their involvement in the Twenty20 next June when both men’s and women’s semi finals and finals will be played on the same day at the same venue.

3.Men’s international cricket… be it Test, One Day Internationals or Twenty20. 3 vibrant forms of the game with Test cricket having endured for more than 130 years and still regarded in a recent survey by FICA as the form of the game.

4.On-and-Off the field

we can be proud of our anti-corruption and security unit, which has become a model for other codes of sport.

We can be proud of our efforts to encourage and support our members to become compliant with anti-doping regulations and

We can be proud of our anti-racism code and zero tolerance attitude against racism. Considering where I come from you can be rest assured of that attitude.

So, there you are, just a few of the positives we can celebrate and I hope we will add to that list over the coming years.

But what do I bring to this role? Well four things:

First of all, experience – cricket experience

I played the game at first-class level and have been an administrator at provincial and national level in South Africa as well as a selector and the convenor of selectors for the Proteas.

I qualified as a chartered accountant in 1985 and until recently I was the managing partner in a professional services firm with more than 400 staff. I know you will be confident with my professional skills set.

What about my passion for the game of cricket. Unsurprisingly from an early age and still very strong today... perhaps the only reason that we all continue to serve this game... I’m sure the evidence is visible in the many roles I have played as a player, administrator and a selector. I am here to make a real difference to the game that I love.

But I am under no illusions about the size of the task ahead of me. ICC’s public image is low and one of my aims has to be to change that negative perception of our organisation. There is plenty to do in that area and it’s in my hands.

So there you have it, four elements that describe me:

Experience as a cricket person

Skill as a professional

Passion for the game

And under No illusions about the task ahead for all of us

Did you know that spells ESPN – which is pretty fortunate given that they are our hugely valued broadcast partner for the next seven years. I guess I’m lucky it doesn’t spell out a rival channel.

I am lucky, too, to inherit a sport that is strong and growing stronger. One such strength is the financial structures already in place.

Fantastic agreements with our commercial partners, foremost among them the one we signed in December 2006 with ESPN STAR Sports, the game is financially secure in the medium-term and it is thanks to that security that we can confirm today that we are making the biggest-ever investment in the game from top to bottom over the next seven years.

From next year the ICC will pump almost US$300 million into our 94 Members that make up the developing cricket world.
That’s at least US$40 million per annum… more than double last year.
We believe this is the biggest investment in global development by any sport outside football.

So, what do we hope to achieve by this huge investment?
We want to see results that challenge world cricket’s existing order.
And we want to develop better players and better structures on and off the field, giving everyone the chance to be the best they can be.

All Full Members will also benefit from substantial increases in funding from the ICC over the coming years and this is in keeping with one of my ambitions to strengthen ourselves vertically at existing Member level, not just horizontally.

So, we have plenty to celebrate but as we do so we should remind ourselves that our work is far from complete. There is more work to be done and one of the ways we will succeed in doing that work is by living & upholding our values, every day.

What are those values? Well, as contained in the ICC’s strategic plan, they are these:

Openness, honesty and integrity

Excellence

Accountability and responsibility

A commitment to the game

Respect for our diversity

Fairness and equity, and

Working as a team

I believe I stand for all these values and I want to ensure that, as an organisation, we look to live these values every day and in all that we do.

I am determined to work with you…, I am determined to work in the best interests of the game and with your support I will succeed in this job. I have the ESPN to succeed in this job.

What we must do is work together… because if we can do that then we will ensure success and our strong sport will grow even stronger. Mandela once said – “All of us working together have the power to change the course of destiny”… And remember, the future of the game is in our hands.