It is thought as one of the most controversial policies implemented in world cricket, when the Australian cricket board decided that news agencies have to pay licensing fees to report news stories and take photos on Australian cricket at the venue of play. News media agencies around the world have come out in full support condemning this action as it goes against the fundamental policies of the media, which is “you don’t pay to report news”. Credibility is lost especially considering the fact that the Australian board has the choice of deciding the photos that can be offered for licensing.

Talk about clever censorship. The timing of this decision also came as a huge surprise. A lot of theories have floated on this move and let’s examine them all.

Minimize coverage of the possible world record?

The Sri Lankan cricket board has gone out to voice their concerns that the Australian cricket board has deliberately done that to minimize media coverage of Muthiah Muralitharan breaking Warne’s test record, which they expect to happen during this test series. Well!! That looks like a far fetched theory. The Australian cricket board cannot possibly be all that naive.

Money?

Australian cricket board simply wants to make money. BCCI sniffing the slightest opportunity to make money has come out in full support to them. Well!… this is logical, maybe that’s all this whole thing is about. But why would they want to risk limiting coverage. Football is a bigger global sport than cricket and FIFA doesn’t do this.

Censorship to counter racial abuse controversy?

Only a series before, there was a huge controversy raked up on racism when the Australian team toured India, with Andrew Symonds apparently been subjected to personal abuse by few of the Indian spectators. What followed was a huge outcry from the Australian media that went on for weeks and the subsequent photos taken of some Indian fans making monkey faces when Symonds came on to bat, being published and hailed as the “proof”.

While racism or personal abuse against any player has to be condemned, some sections of the Indian media went on a counter attack on the case of ‘look who is crying foul’. There was extensive coverage of the sledges of the Australian cricketers, Australian fans chanting “monkey” to Makhaya Ntini etc. Some channels went further on to say that the photographer from Getty images was contracted by the Australian cricket board for their services and possibly instructed to get these snaps as proof. Now the debate here is not on this Symonds controversy as such, so we will not touch upon this.

Now with the Sri Lankan series coming up, followed by the Indian team’s tour, it would have caused a serious embarrassment to the Australian cricket board and the country, if supposed racism incidents from the Australian crowd happened and photos for the same was published. And it doesn’t come as a big surprise, as Sri Lanka especially Muthiah has been over the years on the receiving end of the fans in Australia. With Symonds writing a rather immature note on his newspaper column that the Indian team will face a huge backlash when they tour, the Australian cricket board obviously needed to come out with a clever way of possibly handling all of these which would prevent a huge embarrassment.

So the best option was to implement the media licensing and rights for photos taken on the venue. In that way, they might still have some chance of censorship. The BCCI joined the band wagon and went on full support for the Australian cricket board. Everyone knows that the BCCI are hounds that can sniff a dollar anywhere. But it still works for them too, as BCCI would again benefit from such future incident being reported.

So in all probability, the Australian cricket board will gauge the crowd behaviour of the Sri Lanka tour and then maybe take a call to throw away this policy or make changes to the accreditation and licensing policy in the name of a compromise or dialogue between the media agencies and the board.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if this policy is all together scrapped or heavily watered down after India tours Australia.

These are just theories for thought and debate. At the end of the day, the crowd behaviour would probably be at their best thus silencing cricket officials on the great lengths to which they define cricketing policies with no real food for thought.