Times Media: Dead bat for CSA challenge to ICC plan

TELFORD VICE

A Cricket SA (CSA) bid to quash a controversial proposal to radically restructure world cricket cricket has been declared dead in the water.

On Monday, CSA said their president, Chris Nenzani, had written to his International Cricket Council (ICC) counterpart, Alan Isaac, describing the plan as “fundamentally flawed as regards the process and, therefore, in breach of the ICC constitution”.

Nenzani wrote that the document “should first be referred to the relevant ICC committees or sub‐committees for proper consideration and to make recommendations to the ICC board”.

The ICC gave that argument short shrift yesterday. “Any member of the ICC can make a proposal, and England, Australia and India are all members of the working group that made this proposal,” a spokesperson said.

“Constitutionally, they have done the right thing.

“The proposal is still up for discussion, so it can be shot down by the members. It needs seven full member votes to pass and four to be defeated.”

The fuss is over 21 pages of legalese prepared by the working group of the ICC’s finance and commercial affairs committee and presented at a meeting of the directors of the 10 full member countries’ boards in Dubai on January 9. The document is set to be discussed at an ICC board meeting in Dubai next week.

If the proposal is accepted, international cricket will be re-arranged into haves - the big three of India, England and Australia - and have-nots - the rest of the test-playing countries. The latter include SA, despite the fact that they boast the No. 1 team in tests.

CSA’s representative at the ICC, typically their president, would be precluded from chairing a new entity, the executive committee, which “will act as the sole recommendation committee ... on all constitutional, personnel, integrity, ethics, development and nominations matters”.

Only India, England or Australia would be permitted to lead what would be this dangerously powerful structure. In fact, those countries would dominate the executive committee - all of the other countries would be represented by a single nominee drawn from their own ranks.

The big three would also keep a disproportionately large share of the ICC’s profits, an idea that has some logic behind it because those countries also contribute more to the coffers than all of the others combined.

However, that would of course mean smaller slices of the cake for the other members. Also, the proposed scrapping of the future tours programme, and the stipulations that “no member should be forced to play another member except as bilaterally agreed” and “no member should be forced to host uneconomic tours” mean India, England and Australia will control who plays whom and when, and consequently how much money the smaller countries will earn.

One senior administrator had hopes that the proposal would not be passed as well as fears that members would be co-opted to make that happen.

“Besides India, England and Australia, every one of the boards has concerns,” he said. “They question is whether they will stand up and be counted.

“But it depends how the other countries are bullied and leveraged by the big three the closer we get to the meetings.”