CSA's status slips as PCB's rises

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

Cricket SA’s (CSA) slipping status among national boards was hinted at yesterday when the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) claimed to be the leading earners among the game’s small seven test-playing countries.

The PCB said in a statement that the International Cricket Council (ICC) had, at their meeting in Melbourne, agreed to “grant Pakistan the fourth rank after the ‘big three’ – India, England and Australia – in terms of the percentage of revenue to be received from the ICC in the next eight years from broadcasting and other rights on ICC fixtures”.

In January, parts of CSA’s grandiosely framed objection to a proposal to restructure the ICC invoked the words of Nelson Mandela and read like a plea to be admitted to the highest echelon of suits itself.

Their president, Chris Nenzani, wrote to the ICC of “SA’s cardinal role in the history of the ICC and also the sacrifices made by the people of SA in order to defeat a system condemned by the international community as a crime against humanity (apartheid)”.

The South Africans damned the revamp plan, which would lock most of the authority and revenue in international cricket in the Indian, English and Australian boards, as “fundamentally flawed”.

Seven of the ICC’s 10 full members supported the proposal. CSA, the PCB and Sri Lanka Cricket were opposed. Eight votes were needed for the measures to be adopted.

In February, all three of the holdouts backtracked and agreed to an amended version of the new deal. Among the changes was a fund to support test cricket, a convoluted process for increasing the ranks of test teams, and a binding future tours programme.

Currently, more powerful countries are able to force others to do their bidding in terms of tours - as India did when they shortened their visit to SA last season from 12 to five matches.

But money matters most. Although India generate more than 70% of world cricket’s revenue, under the ICC’s existing model they are required to share the profits equally with the other nine full members. Now, the cake will be unevenly sliced.

One version of cricket’s future leading up to the ICC’s February meeting at which the restructure proposal was accepted in principle said that if the game earned US$2.5-billion between 2015 and 2023, the BCCI would keep US$568-million, the England Cricket Board US$173-million and Cricket Australia US$130.5-million.

The restructure process is being completed at the Melbourne meeting this week, where the 52 members of the ICC’s full council approved the proposal at their annual conference.

The president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Narayanaswami Srinivasan, was confirmed as ICC chairperson - officially recognising what he has long been, the most powerful man in cricket.

At a press conference in Melbourne yesterday, Srinivasan said the ICC had “restructured itself to become more viable and offer better financial stability to full members as well as associates, concentrate on meritocracy, afford associate members a chance to start playing test cricket with full members, and also to emphasise development of cricket among the associates and affiliates”.

Srinivasan will become ICC chairman despite having stood down as BCCI president pending the outcome of an Indian supreme court investigation into corruption claims made against him. He dismissed the basis for the probe as “unsubstantiated, unverified allegations made by some people”.

CSA, who will not look forward to Srinivasan’s elevation as he and their chief executive, Haroon Lorgat, have clashed in the past, ignored requests for comment.