BBC SPORT | Sports Talk | Forum | Ehsan Mani quizzed

Ehsan Mani will take over as president of the International Cricket Council in June 2003.

Mani, who has represented Pakistan in the ICC since 1989, was also a member of the organising committee for the 1996 World Cup in Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka and has served on the Asian Cricket Council.

In the run-up to the presidency, Mani will serve as ICC's vice president for one year, during which the World Cup will be held in South Africa from February to March, 2003.

And Mani joined us to answer a selection of your e-mails.

Mark, Australia

What is your background as a cricketer?

Ehsan Mani: I played fairly decent club cricket and played cricket for my University, in Lahore. I was just on the fringe of coming into first class cricket when I came to England to study accountancy, and that was effectively the end of my cricket career!

Paul, UK

You say you want to develop the game in the USA - how can cricket win widespread attention in the land of baseball?

EM: To begin with on the East Coast of the US there is a huge West Indian, Pakistani and British ex-pat community and that would be the starting point. The same applies to Canada. The hope would be to start with them and to take the game into the schools.

There is already a huge amount of cricket being played in the US but we need to build on it.

Zuhaad, USA

Let me first say that being a Pakistani myself it is a matter of great pride to see a fellow countryman leading the ICC in near future. My heartiest congratulations to you Sir!

Cricket is by no means an international sport as it effectively involves less than a dozen full time playing teams. While I know it may never be as international as soccer is; do you believe that say 20 years from now we may have up to 25 Test playing nations?

EM: I would genuinely love to say yes to that but I think realistically if we can get three or four more Test playing countries that would be a huge achievement.

I would also like to point out that while cricket is only played in ten countries at Test level, if you look at the population of these countries there are approximately 1.8 billion people who follow and support the game of cricket.

Ben Carbonaro, Australia

What do you think of the upcoming triangular one-day series in Morocco, will it help to introduce cricket into a previously untouched area?

EM: It's quite a bold step. Morocco has some cricket going on but not very much and this is the first time cricket will be played at a serious level in Africa. It's the first step hopefully of a long journey.

Asad, Pakistan/Canada

Many thanks for your excellent contribution to the game of cricket. I wish you all the best in your new role. We are looking forward to your attempts to resolve cricketing ties b/w Pakistan & India. I am sure your role as ICC President will give Pakistan its due share of recognition within cricketing world.

EM: There's a huge amount of goodwill between the cricket boards of India and Pakistan. They are both very keen to resume playing cricket between each other. Obviously there are government policies involved, but I sincerely hope that before I take over next year cricket will have resumed between these two countries.

Nadeem, Birmingham

Lord Condon says around 100 people will be banned from the World Cup in 2003. Why haven't these people been named?

EM: Personally I don't know why, but I suspect it is for legal reasons. There are issues of libel and defamation and often in these situations there is not enough evidence to prosecute these people but there's a huge amount of suspicion. So Lord Condon is probably not taking any risks.

Mansoor Mian, USA

First I want to congratulate you on your recent appointment as the President of the ICC. Secondly, I am curious about two recent issues that have really impacted negatively on the current financial situation of PCB;

1- What is being done to compensate Pakistan for the losses incurred due to the refusal of West Indies to play in Pakistan, New Zealand's aborted tour?

2- Why are Pakistan not allotted any points for the Lahore Win against New Zealand? I mean it is not Pakistan that decided to abort the tour.

I understand the reasoning behind New Zealand's refusal to play the Test, but the Pakistani team were still ready to play. Pakistan should be awarded points for the whole series or at least the one Test win in the cricket championship.

EM: As far as the compensation issue is concerned I think a lot of people don't realise that the ICC doesn't actually have any money of its own. It has some reserves to pay for expenses but all of its funds come from the member countries. So if one country is going to be compensated all the other countries have to contribute.

There are better ways of giving resources to a country than just cash. The best compensation would be to actually reschedule the cricket that has had to be cancelled.

On the second point I wasn't involved in the details. This is a technical issue and the ICC will be dealing with this. The West Indies series obviously did count towards the championship points but the New Zealand series did not count as the ICC rules stipulate it must be a two match series, and the second match did not start.