There is no fiercer battle than the one to be the least appealing individual in British sporting governance. It is a field in which we are absolutely world class. From the FA to the RFU to the ECB to the Jockey Club and far beyond, we really bring home the bacon. All the cured pork, in fact. Of all the games we invented, this is the last one we can always be sure of winning.

And yet, even by the high standards of his peers, the England and Wales Cricket Board chairman, Colin Graves, is having an excellent run. I think the clinching factor is how much Colin clearly seems to hate cricket. In one sense, even that’s not weird. All populists secretly hate their people. All bookies secretly hate their punters. And all sports blazers secretly hate their sport. You only have to look at Gianni Infantino’s sporticidal plans for a 48-team World Cup, and ever more competitive black-tie award ceremonies, to see a similar tendency.

Hundred tournament is a definite starter, claims ECB chairman Colin Graves Read more

But the common thread is that they tend to do it secretly. Colin’s distaste for cricket appears ever more open. How else to read his comments to the BBC’s Simon Mann on Monday? Colin was justifying The Hundred, a highly uncalled-for fourth format of the game he seems bent on driving through, despite vocal resistance from the Professional Cricketers’ Association, many players past and present, and a demographic we’ll call “members of the public who like cricket”.

He is doing this, he reasoned, because cricket as we know it has nothing to offer young people. “The younger generation, whether you like it or not, are just not attracted to cricket,” Colin explained. “They want something different. They want it to be more exciting. They want it shorter. They want it simpler to understand.”

Before he makes a dash for the lawyers – of which more later – I should say it is perfectly possible Colin doesn’t realise he dislikes cricket at all. He almost certainly believes he loves it. That might be his tragedy. It is likely that his antipathy towards cricket is wholly subconscious, buried beneath that monogram-gated exterior. It is up to you to speculate quite how many – or quite how few – hours Colin would need on the couch of a Viennese-school psychoanalyst to tease out the possibility. Or, to keep an open mind, for the shrink to come up with another credible explanation as to why he has frequently disparaged the appeal of various forms of the game. It wasn’t long into his tenure at the ECB before he was describing the record ticket-selling T20 Blast competition as “mediocre”. So he has form for tipping on the ECB’s own products, to use the parlance of our times.

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Yet the more contradictory positions that emanate from the ECB, the harder it is to shake the feeling that if it isn’t happening in the immediate vicinity of the chairman’s walnut gearknobbed saloon, he isn’t powerfully aware of it. Colin’s interview aired on the very day the ECB announced that 50,000 youngsters have signed up to participate in its All Stars Cricket initiative this summer. Never mind knowing what the other is doing – is the ECB’s right hand even in the same time zone as its left hand?

I’m reminded of Alan Partridge ringing his son and being appalled to discover where he is. “Fernando,” he despairs, “you’re 22 years old and you’re spending your Saturday afternoon in bed with a girl. You’re wasting your life.” And so with Colin’s declaration coming on the day of the All Stars news. Kids, you’re squandering your youth with this stuff! Have you tried football instead?

Alas, Colin’s tenure has already become too much for some. As ECB board member Andy Nash put it in his resignation letter a few weeks ago: “I’ve recently become concerned that the standards of corporate governance at ECB are falling well short of what’s acceptable and in all conscience, I can’t allow myself to continue to be associated with it. I would be failing in my duty as a director if I didn’t bring these to the board’s attention and this I’ve tried to do.”

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What can one say? Not a lot, if the lawyers have anything to do with it. His regime is already reportedly suing ESPNcricinfo’s George Dobell. Other threats of a trip down the Strand seem likely. They might even sue over Nash’s resignation letter, who knows? After the Mann interview, Graves might be considering suing Glamorgan for the time-bending feat of pre-contradicting him. By way of recap, Graves said on Monday of the suggestion the ECB compensated counties for the years they miss out on staging a Test: “No payments have been made to counties at all.” Yet Glamorgan stated in March: “Following discussions with the ECB the club decided not to apply to host Test matches during the 2020 to 2024 period in return for a compensation payment of £2.5m.”

As for the continuing point of Colin Graves, it is a matter of increasing speculation. He might well be a form of blazered Terminator, sent back in time with the sole mission of throwing former ECB chairman Giles Clarke into sympathetic relief. Either way, his innovation has more and more vocal detractors. Whatever the broadcasters might prefer, most believe that the various forms of the game we already have just need a little TLC. Which is to say: Colin is chasing waterfalls, when he really should stick to the rivers and the lakes that he’s used to.