Times Media: Cricket sharpens knife for its own throat

TELFORD VICE

The most important meeting in cricket history starts today amid dire warnings that the game is preparing to cut its own throat.

If, at their board meeting in Dubai that ends tomorrow, the International Cricket Council (ICC) approves a proposal to restructure the game that first surfaced on at a working group meeting January 9, much of cricket’s money and power will be entrenched in the boards of just three of the ICC’s full members: India, England and Australia.

Every other country represented at the ICC, including SA, which is home to the best test team in the game, would be relegated to second-class status in terms of revenue and authority.

The BCCI generates more than 70% of cricket’s revenue but has to share a large proportion of it with other members. Now the Indians want to keep a larger percentage of the money they raise.

They are not interested in debating the rights and wrongs of the issue - if the board does not approve the proposal, the BCCI say, they will take their team out of events like the World Cup and the World T20, which would have a devastating effect on the price the ICC would be able to ask for the rights to broadcast those events on television.

“This proposal, if accepted, will create division and strife in world cricket like never seen before,” former Cricket SA managing director Ali Bacher said. “Member countries must not forget the animosity that was created when England and Australia had a veto.”

Ehsan Mani, the president of the ICC from 2003 to 2006, said in a letter to the current president, Alan Isaac, that the big three had “completely undermined the integrity and standing of the ICC, its president and the board ... in promoting their own agenda without due and proper discussion by the board. Clearly, the right standard of Boardroom behaviour is not seen to be in place”.

Mani questioned the notion that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the England Cricket Board (ECB) and Cricket Australia (CA) that they would take cognisance of the other members’ best interests.

“They do not demonstrate how they will do this in any meaningful way. They do, however, plan to make significant financial gains for themselves and completely control the workings of the ICC to the exclusion of the other members.”

Countries not among the big three would earn a smaller slice of cricket’s revenue cake, have little say in decisions about tours to and from the big three countries - cricket’s lifeblood - and be subject to relegation from the top tier of eight test-playing teams.

Currently 10 teams play test cricket, none of them in danger of relegation. In terms of the new deal, India, England and Australia would be the only sides guaranteed a place among the elite eight.

In his column in the London Times yesterday, former England captain Michael Atherton took a realist approach.

“No one doubts that the status quo, as far as the ICC is concerned, is unacceptable: two full member countries are thought to be corrupt; four are essentially broke; most rely on India’s largesse to keep going, while the BCCI is disgruntled that the distribution of revenues does not reflect its provenance,” Atherton wrote.

“Politics, race and personalities interfere with decision-making at every turn. Incompetence is a given; at a recent ICC meeting, I was told of one director who took to snoring through an anti-corruption presentation.“... The best that can be said for this deal, indeed the only thing that can be said for this deal, is that India become a fully engaged and interested party to world cricket. Inside the tent and happy for the moment, rather than prowling outside and angry.”