From: Jason Beer
To: Masood Zaigham
Sent: den 7 augusti 2001 23:03
Subject: RE: Letter to the Board - Jasons personal right of reply

Hi Masood, that was nice to receive on my return from holiday.

In reply to your disection of my letter. I trust you will do me the courtesy of putting my reply in full on your website as you have done with your letter. With the same exposure on your site as you give your letter.

I will not get into a prolonged argument about my mail to you. We could go on forever. This is a personal response from me as I feel attacked personally by your comments.

The original letter, posted at the end of this explanation, can be read again by those wishing too, in it´s unbroken form, and my correct context derived from it. It certainly is not the sinister letter, that you make it out to be.

It was a letter of support to you on your moral argument, but reinterated that no tournament rule had been broken and as such action based on the rules were not possible. I was urging you to not do what you have now done(withdraw from the tournament) and continue to support us and the ECC supported 5 year plan which addresses many of the issues. And to recommend changes to this problem through the correct channels.

I urged you to send in exactly what had happened. My letter was written the day after the event. My letter did not relate to any of the other issues you raised in your response. My letter reffered only to the incident in question and the effects of your (then proposed) actions. Many of those issues, in your reply, I had not even heard about until your disection of my letter.

I also told you what the impact of your actions, and what we would have to do, if you withdrew your kids from Team Sweden.

This leads me onto a few points. You withdrew your kids 2 weeks before the tournament start date. How can this not seriously impact on the team and it´s organisation? We do not have 150 players to choose from at the drop of a hat as you state.

Your kids were part of the Swedish Birth Citizen component of the squad. We would be lucky to have 20 Swedish Birth Citizens who have played in the Swedish Championship this year out of the 12 Clubs playing. Of which, only 12 players are adults.

This is a critically ill situation in Swedish Cricket.

This is an area the 5 year plan is trying to rectify. Personnally, I do not beleive we should even have a senior Team Sweden until we have at least 50 Swedish Birth Citizen adults playing in the Swedish Championship. It is near impossible to get a team together with only 12 Swedish Birth Citizen adults playing in the series. The ECC rules state that we need 6 Swedish Birth Citizens, in our national playing 11, to even take the field in International competitions.

You mention umpires. We the board are not magicians. We cannot wave a magic wand and have neutral umpires jump out of a hat.
Where are the neutral umpires to come from, if the clubs will not provide them? This is another issue the 5 year plan is addressing.

We have already run an umpires course this year. It was open to all clubs and players. Only 4 clubs provided someone. Umpires need to be up to date with the very latest Laws of cricket, as do all players. Your club neither attended the course nor has offered a person to the SCF to be a neutral umpire that could be used. The same as nearly all other clubs. We did not have a list of people that wanted to be umpires and we did not have the resources to co-ordinate neutral umpires for each game. Thus it was left up to the home team to organise. Not unreasonable in the circumstances.

I am disappointed that you have withdrawn from the competition. It impacts severly on the tournament this year. I had hoped you would have the vision to look further down the road in regards to what this board is trying to do with the 5 year plan, which addresses many of the issues you raised. The 5 year plan has only been going a few months. The strange thing is, it appears you agree with everything the plan stands for.

In my opinion, you should have registered your protest about the team exploiting a loophole in the rules, offer a solution to the hole in the rules that can be implemented next year and continued looking and supporting the overall scope of what the 5 year plan is about.

We are just a small handful of people on the board. We have only effectively been operational from January, due to the late AGM and received no help from the outgoing board, not even bank info or club details. We also have jobs and family to juggle in around the SCF board. People seem to think we are full time cricket administrators.

We are trying to get a structure and process up and running for all of Sweden to move towards a better organisation and future in cricket here. This requires more than 2 or 3 people to do the job.

Every person and club involved in cricket in Sweden needs to stand up and take on some responsibility for what happens in Sweden and it´s future. This means meeting deadlines, offering solutions and being prepared to put in the work to fulfil the solutions, so we too can be like Denmark.

This year has always been considered a transition year into the full plan. This means the board, clubs and players are all on a learning curve. You can look at the objectives for this year, the short term plan(1 yr), on the interim website(we are moving to Cricinfo when I have time). We have fulfilled all but 2 of them with 4 months to go since our 1 yr election aniversary.

These 2 are unfulfilled:
1.Get more people involved in assisting with all projects and functions especially 2-3 from each major area to organize and oversea proceedings.

2.Become reinstated to full affiliate member status of the European Cricket Council again.(remember, this was lost to us last year, this board managed to get temporary status and assistance for this year as a direct result of the 5 year plan.)

To refresh everyones memory: A player that came from a club, (as we have tried to start with a clean slate this year, we will not name that club), was responsible for the death threats towards last years President and his family. The President resigned in disgust at the lack of support from his board and the clubs of the federation(the Vice President resigned in his support) and the complete lack of regard for Swedens cricket future. The rest of the board refused to stand down and as a result Sweden were subsequently removed from the ECC - European Cricket Council

The 5 year plan addresses the following issues:

The critical shortage of Swedish Birth Citizens
The critical shortage of umpires
The critical shortage of youth
The shortage of discipline and the Spirit of Cricket
The shortage of communication and processes
The shortage of quality and standard in facilities.

For anyone who is not aware of the 5 year plan please go to the Swedish Cricket website and read it.
http://www.swedishcricket.com/english/2001_2005_detailed_en.shtml
http://www.swedishcricket.com/english/2001_2005_overview_temp.shtml

Everyone ensure you join the Swedish Cricket Federation email lists so you are informed about events directly from the SCF.
http://www.swedishcricket.com/english/mail_lists.shtml

On your claims that rules have been broken this year and the Board is supporting rulebreakers. I would not be sitting on the board still if I was aware of that being the case. I would demand resignation from any board member assisting a team to break the rules. If they would not resign, I certainly would.

We the board cannot determine which games have been legal until we have gone through all match scorecards. These scorecards will have the names of all players in the match which can then be checked against licenced players and citizenship. Match results and bonus and reward points will be made official when that process is done.

We have had to be flexible on some of the administration rules simply because we do not have the time or man power to fulfil what was stated. That is unfortunate, but we can only do so much. It does not mean the rule is bad or that the board is bad. Just we have bitten off more than we could chew in administarative matters. I would hope more people stand up next year to assist.

Official results and points will be allocated according to the rules when these match scorecards are checked. As I indicated to you a week before this incident occured.

Ideally we will have plastic registration cards with a photo next year for all licensed players. We cannot put the clubs player lists on the web because it against Swedish law. We need each players permission. Something else that needs to be addressed for next year.

I personally encourage open debate and keeping many issues public. We have a discussion board on the website. Everyone, please feel free to write any grievances there in a public forum and we can respond to issues there as well. Suggestions and solutions, as well, are very welcome from everyone. But please remember we are only part time at this. We have family, jobs and lives as well as the SCF. Well, we are supposed too!

If everyone knows what the issues are, everyone can contribute opinions and solutions to fine tune and tighten the rules. This can only help all of us in implementation and successful deployment of the 5 year plan and Swedens cricketing future.

Ultimately Desi should never have played half a team of Norweigens in the Swedish Championship. However the rules do permit this. It is not the intention of the rules to allow this. It obviously needs attention. Remember there were no rules last year nor have there been since 1996. This year we have a requirement for 4 Swedish Citizens. Next year in addition, to those 4 Citizens, 2 Swedish Birth Citizens.

Clubs and players really have to look hard at themselves and their internal structure and ask themselves "why do we need to play a team full of international players?".

If you are not developing a club by introducing and getting kids involved and introducing and getting new people involved, making them feel welcome, wanted, encourage them, give them opportunity and ensure they have fun playing cricket, then a club will always struggle.

This is the essence of the whole problem.

regards

Jason (my personal response because I felt personally attacked.)

PS. to anyone that forwarded Masoods letter to someone else please forward this on to them also.

My original letter to Masood, I will let everyone decide if it is the sinister letter Masood alleges:

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Beer [mailto:jasonbeer@minmail.net]
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 10:41 AM
To: Imran Hassan Zaigham
Subject: Norweigen problem

Hi Masood, I heard about what happened yesterday.

Unfortunately Masood, there is nothing in the tournament rules that state that Desi cannot do what Desi did. If they played 4 Swedish Citizens then they are within the rules. Naveed has said that they licensed the players during the week.

Yes, you are morally right. People should not be playing with people that live outside Sweden in the Swedish Championship.

We agree with you. This is what the 5 yr plan is all about. If you read the plan, each year will have stronger requirements for playing Swedish Birth Citizens. But we cannot do it overnight. This is why we need your support to ensure the plan is carried forward so that we have a genuine Swedish Championship.

It is difficult to balance a sport that is migrant based and try and get it into the wider community with rules fair for all. This is why we draw the line at a mix between 6 Birth Citizens/Citizens and leave 5 places open to all, to try and accomadate all that wish to play cricket here but ensure that it becomes a genuine Swedish Championship. (more than 50% Swedes)

Remember, your club had signed a motion to have an Extra Ordinary Meeting, just before the season was about to start, to get all the new changes changed back to the old system. The old system that had a completely open Championship meaning a side could play the Australian Test Team if it wanted! I am very glad you have changed your mind.

If you want to bring in a rule that says you cannot play any non Swedish living players by all means put a motion up at the AGM.

I personally would support a rule saying that you can play no more than 1 non Swedish living person in a Championship side.

On your threat to withdraw from the Championship: I hope you will consider that very carefully Masood, now the heat of the moment is gone. Remember Desi are within the rules. We have got the 5 year plan that is changing the system to stop that kind of thing occuring.

We need clubs like yours to support what we are doing. If you run off to Denmark next year you are putting under severe threat any chance of getting lasting change put into the Swedish Championship. Changes that will help us move towards the kind of system and organisation Denmark have.

Please think carefully. Your kids can never play for Denmark. So help us now to ensure there is the correct structure to enable your kids to play for Sweden. Do you want things to go back to the way they were last year?

On your removal of your kids from the National Side, I think that is a cruel thing to do to your kids after you have told them that they will be playing for their country. They have already missed out on playing for Junior Sweden this year. It also puts in serious doubt our ability to enter a side this year. This will impact very severly on the support of the ECC who are already very unhappy we pulled out of Greece.

We will have to notify the ECC of the exact reasons why we had to pull out: that your club is withdrawing the 2 players it commited to our National Side because it wants to leave the Swedish Championship effective immediately to play in Denmark next year, because you did not like the fact a side played Norweigans in a Championship game even though this is within the rules.

I beleive you are going to send a letter to all clubs and to the ECC about this issue. Yes, terrific, please do this. We fully agree with your stand about this issue. The more support and pressure put on clubs and the ECC the quicker we can get these changes implemented.

We are on your side Masood . We agree with you, Desi is morally wrong. Stick with us and help us get the 5 yr plan continued and these issues will become less of a problem. Lets get this problem sorted out by Malmö putting in a motion at the next AGM.

We need your clubs support to get the changes in the 5 yr plan to become a reality. This plan ensures clubs like yours, that work towards crickets future in Sweden, will become the teams to beat in the coming years. Otherwise all clubs, wanting progress and change, might as well all join the Denmark league, which will be a lot less work for me!

regards

Jason