JOIN USThe Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will have its task cut as the richest cricket board in the world pushes for lion’s share of revenue from ICC’s earnings along with two cricket boards from England and Australia at the two-day executive board meeting of the governing body on Tuesday.
It will be a ‘three versus seven’ fight at the meeting with BCCI, England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) having prepared a ‘Position Paper’ which will allow these three boards to control the parent body’s functioning. In fact, BCCI has already made it clear that their participation in the future ICC events would be decided subject to approval of the ‘Position Paper’.
As per ICC rules, seven of the 10 Board members (Test-playing nations) need to approve the controversial proposal but the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) and Cricket South Africa (CSA) have already publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the contents of the ‘Position Paper’.
It has been learnt that BCCI also wants an ICC event every two years in India and also wants to overrule the ICC’s FTP (Future Tours & Programme) by engaging into direct discussions with respective cricket boards for bilateral series.
Also there would be discussions on creating a post of ICC Chairman, which would rotate between the BCCI, CA and ECB with N Srinivasan being the hot favourite to become the first chairman. It would also effectively turn the ICC president into a virtual ‘rubber-stamp’. According to BCCI sources, Srinivasan has already promised the members of his affiliated units, a bigger grant if BCCI happens to get the lion’s share.
There have been series of meetings — Chief Executives’ Committee meeting that included meeting of Working Groups on DRS and Anti-Corruption, followed by the meeting of both the Finance and Commercial Affairs Committee and Governance Review Committee. But the focus will solely be on the proposal of the ‘Big Three’ when they officially table their bid to take over world cricket.
Miffed with the changes being proposed in the ICC’s administrative structure, ex-ICC top officials Malcolm Gray and Malcolm Speed, former West Indies captain Clive Llyod, along with former Pakistan Cricket Board presidents Shahryar Khan and Lt Gen (retd) Tauqir Zia, and former ICC chief Ehsan Mani have already expressed their displeasure and opposed it.
The ICC Board consists of the chairman or president from each of the 10 Full Members, plus three elected Associate Member representatives. The ICC President, who chairs proceedings, the ICC Chief Executive and the ICC Vice-President will also be present at the crucial meeting.
PTI