Ashes 2015: Protests Planned During Fifth England vs Australia Test At The Oval
A three-minute silent protest will be staged by the makers of the documentary, "Death of a Gentleman" during the fifth and final Ashes Test at The Oval starting on August 20. This is to raise awareness against what the filmmakers believe is the declining standard of international cricket.
A three-minute silent protest will be held outside The Oval, venue of the fifth and final Ashes Test, by makers of the documentary, "Death of a Gentleman." The documentary, which was released in early August 2015, had raised issues about the declining popularity of Test cricket and also about the governance of the International Cricket Council (ICC), which is administered by cricket boards of India, Australia and England. Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber are the makers of this documentary. (British Documentary Film Raises Questions About Cricket's Future)
According to a report in The Telegraph, the producer, Collins, has said the three-minute silence is for each of the three countries that is trying to silence the ordinary cricket fan. (N Srinivasan To Represent BCCI in ICC Meet)
"Now (that) the Ashes have been decided, we feel the time is right to protest at the powerlessness of all other countries in the cricket world. Nobody has any power except N. Srinivasan of India, Giles Clarke of England and Wally Edwards of Australia," Collins stated.
The film highlighted the point that the cricket administration has no accountability and transparency. Another issue in focus was that the game was shrinking and not expanding.
The ICC was slammed by all sections of the media during the 2015 World Cup for announcing that the upcoming 2019 World Cup would exclude the minnow nations and consist of only the 10 top teams. Another controversial decision was not aggressively pushing T20 cricket's inclusion in the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo. They have reportedly stated that the Big Three in the ICC would lose control if the game became an Olympic sport.
The situation regarding Test cricket is dire and Collins has pointed out that the scrapping of the 2017 World Test Championships indicated the vested interest of the three big boards. Kimber and Collins have launched a petition on their website, changecricket.com.
In the petition, they have called upon fans to pressurise governments into making governance at ICC more transparent. Collins says, "We ask fans of all nations to stand with us and show their dissatisfaction about the way their game is being run."
The protest organisers will be wearing shirts from cricket-playing nations outside of the big three and are requesting fans to turn up one hour before the start of the Test match.