As the two-day ICC board meeting gets under way in Singapore today, here's what we know. Howard was nominated by Australia and New Zealand as the Australasian candidate for vice-president. Normally the role is rotated around the ICC's five regional blocs, it was expected to be a formality that it was rubber-stamped, but somewhere along the line that smooth succession planning procedure went very awry.

Reportedly, six Test-playing nations are preparing to vote against Howard tomorrow. He is supported by Australia, New Zealand and England. The others want him to withdraw his nomination before they combine to vote it down.

Let's backtrack to why Howard was nominated in March to the role, which is supposed to proceed neatly into the Presidency of the ICC. He was at a loose end as an ex-Prime Minister of Australia and was a self-confessed cricket tragic. He had no experience as a cricket administrator, but had a first-class Rolodex from his time as a Commonwealth PM and was a black belt in politics, at least of the Canberra kind.

Getting to the Australasian nomination itself was not an easy process. The New Zealanders nominated Sir John Anderson, a banker whose record as an actual cricket administrator was highly impressive: Anderson presided over the complete rejig of first, the Wellington Cricket Association, then the New Zealand cricket set-up, and after that, rewrote the ICC's constitution.

As a CV for the actual job, Anderson's could not be faulted: on those grounds, putting Howard up against him was a joke. But Cricket Australia managed to "persuade" the New Zealanders that Howard's global political nous was the main ingredient.

Alas, it is the external issues that come as baggage with Howard the ex-politician to the position that appear to have put paid to the Australasian bid - despite the arse-covering mutterings from his opponents that it's all about protocol, that a candidate for V-P ought not come from outside the ICC. Quite simply, for various reasons, the non-white sector of the ICC doesn't like him.

The Indians have had their differences with Howard (when he was PM) over uranium exports, before they even contemplate his potential as ICC vice-president (and ultimately president) to stymie their commercial takeover of world cricket: they see him as a Test-loving traditionalist, an attitude antithetical to their quick-buck addiction. The Sri Lankans won't forgive his public questioning (as PM) of the legitimacy of Muttiah Muralitharan's action.

Zimbabwe cannot stand Howard because of his repeated condemnation of the Mugabe regime and the fact that he stepped in to stop Australia touring there in 2007. Sadly, South Africa - as in everything else - would rather support Zimbabwe wholly than treat any other interpretation of any situation as having any merits at all. (Zimbabwe not wanting Howard gives India, which has relied on Zimbabwe's support at the ICC table, a chance to do a favour in return.)

Pakistan was thought to be prepared to support Howard, as was Bangladesh, but that appears to have changed. Pakistan might have troops dug into the snow on high alert against Indian positions, but seems to be on the verge of switching its vote in solidarity with its detested rival; ditto for Bangladesh. The West Indies, while it doesn't share the antipathy of its Indian Ocean cousins, has evidently decided to abstain, which is as bad for Howard as a vote against him.

It's not looking good for Howard, and by extension, not looking good for the Anglo-Saxon camp within the ICC. Despite whatever rhetorical gloss is put on it, the whole sorry saga has been a disgraceful reneging by the sub-continental bloc on a well-accepted formal succession process, with the opportunity to settle a few political scores just too tempting.

It will probably mean that the best actual candidate for the ICC vice-presidency, Sir John Anderson, ultimately gets the gig, but it leaves the ICC exposed as so divided as to be practically unworkable in its present form. John Howard is well out of it.