Is cricket about to be taken over?

'Nobody runs cricket' is my favourite (or maybe my least favourite) phrase in cricket.

Nobody runs cricket.

If you've followed me for any period of time, you will know that this is my favourite phrase in cricket. Actually, maybe it's my least favourite phrase, but I use it a lot. If you follow the podcast, almost anytime a news story comes up, I'm going to be talking about this.

When Ben Stokes would say things like, ‘Oh, someone's really gotta fix this’. I'm sorry Ben, nobody runs cricket. Some fans will get in touch and be like, ‘Oh, I've got a way of fixing the global calendar and everything, and can I run it by you, Jarrod?’ Nobody runs cricket.

‘What's happening with disability cricket? It doesn't seem that big at the moment.’ Nobody runs cricket. I've said this phrase so many times that I'm bored of it myself, but it is true. So I mentioned this because we just had a report that came out that basically says the same, almost verbatim.

That report is from the World Cricket Association, which is the players’ union. And they have basically got together and said exactly what I've been saying over and over again in this report. There are a lot of interesting things from the report, but let's be honest, when it comes down to it, what they're really saying is nobody runs cricket.

But there are a lot of things happening in cricket at the moment, and I think this report and the union itself might have a lot to do with that. Because nobody runs cricket, but maybe some people want to.

I want to go back on the story that happened a couple of weeks ago. Neil Maxwell, who most of you had never heard of until the whole Saudi thing came about, was in the news. And as we've talked about quite a bit, Neil Maxwell is Pat Cummins’ agent. They've been together for a very long time, and their relationship is just not like a normal agent-client one. They're more like business partners at this point.

But this is where it gets a little bit interesting, because Maxwell has been linked to what I call the Saudi Slam. I haven't come up with a better name and I haven't heard anyone else call it, so let's call it the Saudi Slam. I'm not saying I want Saudi Arabia in cricket or I want this to happen, but if they are in cricket and it does happen, I want it to be called the Saudi Slam. And, of course, the Saudi Slam is directly related to Saudi Arabia the country, or the wealth fund.

So Neil Maxwell has certainly been dealing with the Saudi Slam for probably some time now, based on when the original reports came out. And that means he's been dealing with Saudi Arabia directly.

I don’t know if image is the right word. It could also be morals or beliefs. But Pat Cummins, for a major athlete, has real strong views about who sponsors him and who he's involved with. He has made it very clear that he is not like a normal athlete that will just take the first cheque that comes in.

So if you are really, really image conscious and your agent is suddenly working with the Saudis, does that fit? Does that make sense? And I'm not a hundred percent sure it does, but let's just park that for one moment here.

Not only is Neil Maxwell involved with Pat Cummins, he's also been involved with the player agents for quite some time, specifically the Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA) – which is the most important one, as it is the founding member and it kind of founded player unions in cricket twice.

Neil Maxwell is linked to the Saudi Slam and the Australian Cricketers Association, which he's like a lifetime member of. And as I said, the ACA is the founding member of the World Cricket Association – the players union around the world. It's not every team in the world, but obviously there's quite a few here.

So we know that Neil Maxwell is linked to the players unions, and Neil Maxwell is linked to Saudi Arabia.

But how do we know that he's linked to Saudi Arabia? Neil Maxwell didn't come out and say, ‘I'm doing a deal with Saudi Arabia and I'm trying to get cricket up’. It was leaked. Chris Barrett did that story. My question would not so much be who leaked it, but why was it leaked? And this is where I think things get a bit more interesting.

I am not saying the leak came from the players union. Not at all. All I would say is this: in 2014, I was leaked information about the Rebel League. I've also been leaked information several other times in my life. A lot of those leaks have come from the WCA, the ACA or other organizations that have been linked to them.

Specifically when I got the 2014 leak, it was someone who had been involved in the WCA and the ACA. And not only that, it was also someone who was involved in this report.

So we found out about the Saudi league because of a leak. That might've been an unintentional leak. Chris Barrett is a very good journalist. He might've just got some bread crumbs and made of it what he would, and Dan Brettig had also already been reporting on the Saudi stuff.

So it's very possible that the Age and Sydney Morning Herald guys just got together and did this. It's also very possible that there was a leak and it was intentional. But then your next question would be, why would they leak it?

And to understand that, I think we have to talk about the leak, but also the report. The article that Chris Barrett wrote which completely changed the way we think about Saudi Arabian cricket was less than two weeks ago. And within about a week and a half of that story being broken, we have a report by the World Cricket Association which basically says that no one runs cricket and it needs to be run better step by step, maybe even directly affecting how the ICC is run.

Now it could be completely circumstance that just a week and a half before this report came out, there was a big leak. It's possible, this isn't the Illuminati. In fact, even the Illuminati is not the Illuminati, but that's a point for another time.

Let's just focus in on the Saudis again here for a minute. Remember, the Saudis tried to buy the IPL, or at least a very, very big stake in it. And so in the end, they sponsored it. And we also know that the Saudis have been looking into ways to work with the BCCI – through the IPL, but just in general as well.

One other thing worth mentioning here is that the Saudis also own a piece of Jio/Reliance. This means that not only do the Saudis have a direct relationship with the IPL and the BCCI, but they also have a very close relationship with the Ambanis.

The Ambanis now own like 30% of cricket, maybe more. They own Cricinfo, various teams around the world, and I think they've got a stake in Dream11 and FanCode. And not only that, we also know that the Ambanis are interested in the IOC. So this is no longer just a family who wanted to buy an IPL franchise. They are a lot bigger than that. They are probably the most important owners in the IPL.

There are a few things that are weird from the original Chris Barrett story on the Saudis. One is that Test cricket is mentioned. The other is that $500 million is not that much money. And why would the Saudi slam be related to Test cricket?

That brings us back to the leak. What if the purpose of the leak wasn't really to have a Saudi slam? What if the purpose of the leak was partly to put pressure on using the report and also build a further relationship with the Saudi government? $500 million is not a lot. They spend more than that on about four golfers. Why is Test cricket being mentioned here?

There are a lot of unanswered questions, but if you read the report, essentially, they're saying that they want to overthrow the ICC. Now, that's not exactly what they're saying because they're just a players’ association, and they can't say that. But if you did want to overthrow the ICC – and frankly, if you're a cricket fan and you haven't thought about it, what are you doing with your life?

What would you need to do? I suppose you'd want someone with lots of money. Maybe someone who even had a direct relationship with the ICC already (like the Saudis), on board. You'd obviously want someone (like Neil Maxwell), who is an expert in cricket administration and someone who also already had access to that money.

You would want the players on board, and they are represented by the players’ associations. You would also probably want all the information about how badly cricket is run, or the fact that nobody runs cricket out in public (the WCA report) and getting more attention than it normally would. You also probably wouldn't want it to look like a rebel league. So again, if the people who had money (the Saudis) already had a link to the ICC, that would probably be a better place to start.

Then you'd be interested in having the most powerful people in cricket (the BCCI) involved, but maybe it's not them. Maybe it is the Ambanis now. They already control so much of cricket, are such a big part of the IPL and also happen to own one of the biggest cricket publications in the world.

So if nobody runs cricket, you might be asking, ‘Well, what is the ICC?’ Over the last few years, the ICC has moved from being the governing body of the game – and I would argue they were never really the governing body of the game, but they were at least pretending for a little while – into an events company.

The ICC is essentially World Cups. They make a lot of money, but the IPL can make more money. If you can get players from the IPL to the Saudi slam, you can potentially make more money from these two leagues over an eight to nine month period every year than you could from any World Cups. You would still have time in the calendar to play Test series. You could make your own rebel version of a World Cup, and of course cricket would be at the Olympics.

So when the original story came out, I had lots of issues with the Saudi slam, partly because I didn't really understand how the money was going to work. Also, the key relationships hadn't been there. But what if the Saudi slam is just the opening salvo in what is really going to happen here – that the ICC, as it currently exists, is going to be overthrown?

My guess is there are a few players involved who aren't that interested in playing in Saudi Arabia. But what if Saudi Arabia just sponsored all of cricket, the IPL, some sort of extra league, maybe Test cricket too? You end up with your own rebel versions of World Cups and you have people who already own so much of cricket involved as well.

Am I taking a big leap based on the fact that there was a leak just before there was a report? Does the ICC even need to be overthrown if nobody runs cricket? I honestly don't know. But there are two things I absolutely know for sure.

Nobody runs cricket and there is a lot going on in cricket right now.