Must increase revenue as expenses have shot up: Dhumal

The newly appointed BCCI treasurer Arun Dhumal's primary objective is to increase the board's revenue generation by curbing the unnecessary expenditures and instead use that money to improve the financial health of first-class cricketers.

Dhumal, another young face in 'Team Sourav Ganguly's cabinet, has been "surprised" at the amount of expenses that had gone up in past few years mainly due to the legal hassles.

"My goal is to increase the BCCI revenue as what has happened now is that revenues are stable but expenses have gone up. Administrative and legal expenses need to be checked," the BCCI treasurer told PTI during an interaction. "There are few other issues that we need to handle including the tax liabilities and issues with the past IPL franchisees also needs to be addressed," Dhumal said.

He echoed president Ganguly's sentiment that first-class cricketers needed to be taken care of and hence they need more financial resources. "We need to increase the revenue so that it can benefit first-class cricketers as we would be able to distribute the amount among them. Because they are required to be looked after," he said.

While they haven't decided on any amount, Dhumal is confident they will have a figure once there is a meeting of the senior members and Apex Council. "We need to sit with the president and other senior members of Apex Council and decide on an amount. But it will depend on the quantum of increase in revenues as we have to check how much we are earning from the bilateral and other ICC tournaments," he said.

But one thing Dhumal is hellbent on is to check the undue expenses and said that is something non-negotiable. "Definitely, the legal expenses have shot up in the past few years. Not only am I surprised but all the members are surprised with the kind of expenses incurred. This needs to be checked and we will definitely do it."

He also made it clear that BCCI is not on board as far as the FTP for the 2023-2031 cycle is concerned. "We are not agreeable to the new proposal of ICC with regards to increase of tournaments," he said. He seemed peeved that ICC's new working group doesn't have a BCCI representation. "Could we have ever imagined that BCCI will not have a say in ICC's roadmap? It was never imagined. What is ICC without BCCI?"