Manohar steps down as chairman of ICC

nMUMBAI: India’s Shashank Manohar stepped down as ICC chairman on Wednesday, days before the election process for his successor is finalised. Deputy chairman Imran Khwaja, formerly of Singapore Cricket Association, will be the interim head. The new chairman is likely to be a candidate backed by the Indian board. BCCI president Sourav Ganguly could contest though ECB chairman Colin Graves is the frontrunner.

Manohar announced in December he won’t seek a third two-year term in the face of opposition from BCCI. “Last October, BCCI elected new office-bearers and they had begun to make friends in other member boards against him,” says an EX-BCCI administrator.

He was appointed the first independent ICC chairman in May 2016. To meet the ‘independent’ criteria, he quit as BCCI president, then gave up ICC chairmanship and was immediately re-elected. BCCI’S early enthusiasm over Manohar’s election vanished as he reversed the Big Three financial model introduced under N Srinivasan’s ICC tenure in 2014 that gave India, Australia and England a major chunk of the revenue pie, and BCCI promised a whopping $570m (2015 to 2023). A more equitable revenue distribution model was introduced and BCCI lost its seat in the ICC Finance and Commercial Affairs Committee.