BCCI loses revenue, governance votes
The Indian cricket board’s hegemony in world cricket has come under threat, as it has been comprehensively out-voted on governance structure and revenue model at the International Cricket Council (ICC) board meeting in Dubai.India was checkmated by former Board of Control for Cricket in India boss Shashank Manohar, who now helms the ICC as its first independent chairman.
The Indian cricket board’s hegemony in world cricket has come under severe threat as the richest board has been comprehensively out-voted on governance structure and revenue model at the ICC board meeting in Dubai.
India was checkmated by former BCCI boss Shashank Manohar, who now helms the ICC as its first independent chairman.
The BCCI was thrashed 1-9 when representatives of all other member nations, except India’s Amitabh Chaudhary, voted in favour of a change in the financial structure.
Their opposition to change of the governance structure was also rejected 2-8 by the ICC board, with Chaudhary only finding support from Sri Lanka Cricket’s Thilanga Sumathipala.
The BCCI were opposing changes on two counts — ICC’s governance model, which required a change in its constitution with review of full membership, and a two-tier test structure.
The bigger issue was the contentious revenue model, which is set to bring India’s share down to half from $570 million. Manohar has advocated a more equitable distribution from the earlier ‘Big Three’ Model where India, Australia and England were the primary earners.
“Yes, the voting is over. It was 8-2 in favour of revamped revenue model and 9-1 in favour of constitutional changes,” a senior BCCI functionary told PTI.
“The BCCI has voted against both as we had, in principle, maintained all these changes are completely unacceptable for us. At this point, we can only say that all options are open for us. We would have to go back to our special general meeting and apprise the members of the situation,” he said.
Since the BCCI outrightly rejected the additional $100 million pay-out in revenue, it was once again given the original option of $290 million, which is a $280 million cut from the $570 million India had been getting till last year.
A senior official said while it was expected that there would be resistance with the current BCCI dispensation’s bete noire Manohar at the helm, they were taken by surprise when Zimbabwe and Bangladesh — the two votes that BCCI thought of as assured — never came their way.
It is a sort of embarrassment for the Committee of Administrators (COA), as it was dealing with a lot of member nations and was confident of pulling it in India’s favour. The defeat indicates that the COA failed to read the minds of the likes of Nazmul Hasan Papon, David Peever, Haroon Lorgat, all of whom came to India to discuss the changes.