BCCI should be worried about losing its friends

The BCCI dictated terms even two years ago but the sudden apathy to it within the ICC is a cause for concern

The brouhaha over loss of income for the BCCI due to a revised ICC revenue sharing model looks like a mere blip on the radar for the cash-heavy board.

When former world cricket strongman and Indian cricket board boss N Srinivasan devised the ‘Big Three’ in 2014, the financial model had promised the BCCI around $440 million (₹2,973 crore) over eight years in the 2015-2023 cycle.

The revised model now pegs BCCI’S share at around $255-260 million (approximately ₹1,737.2 crore), which would lead to a loss of approximately ₹1,270 crore or ₹158 crore per year for the Indian cricket board. With 26-member associations part of BCCI’S annual grant system, each would have ended up getting around ₹6 crore less from what Srinivasan had promised. It still works out to be a measly sum. Only last year, the Cricket Association of Bengal was said to have fixed deposits amounting to almost ₹100 crore.

Moreover, the loss of income seems to be word-of-mouth.

To give the reader an idea of how loaded the BCCI actually is, they earned around ₹175 crore just from interest on their bank deposits in 2015-16.

“Every association was getting roughly ₹30 crore from the BCCI annually. If the ‘Big Three’ model was implemented, we were assured a grant of at least ₹50 crore, if not more,” said a forcedout BCCI official who is close to Srinivasan. “But the whole process was stalled before we could even get the first bigger grant. So there is no exact figure to the loss. However, I can tell you that the BCCI is set to lose more money if it goes on like this,” he cautioned. However, given the BCCI’S current income model, they have no reason to panic right away.

Even ‘small’ associations like Tripura and Goa have eye-popping corpus thanks to the income generated from media rights (IPL and international matches) and the annual franchise fee by the BCCI. So in the long run, this slash in ICC’S share won’t dent BCCI’S finance much.

REAL ISSUE

The real issue here is the loss of face. Considering they dictated terms not even two years back, the sudden apathy towards BCCI within the ICC right now should set off the alarm bells. When ICC chairman Shashank Manohar tabled his financial reform plan at the ICC meeting in Dubai last month, only Sri Lanka had sided with BCCI. Bangladesh and Zimbabwe had abstained from voting while former allies Australia and England had changed camps. Had it not been for former ICC and BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya’s backing at the turn of the century, Bangladesh’s campaign for Test status wouldn’t have got impetus.

Zimbabwe’s biggest media rights income still comes from the India series which has been held twice in the last two years. Therefore, the silence of these two members was nothing less than confounding for the BCCI. Only recently has Zimbabwe come out against ICC’S proposed two-tier Test system and hence sided with India but the voting pattern in the ICC is still highly interesting.

It shows how polarised the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) has now become.

Dalmiya had paved the way for other Asian members to become the ICC president. Pakistan’s Ehsan Mani was the next Asian to get that honour before Bangladesh’s Mustafa Kamal in 2014. By staying together, the subcontinent has been able to stage three World Cups (1987, 1996 and 2011) now.

The current equations however indicate that the past doesn’t matter.

GAME PLAN

Then there is the curious case of West Indies voting for the financial rollback. Not long ago, West Indies were at their wits’ end to cough up a $41.97 million penalty BCCI had slapped on them after they had abandoned India’s 2014 tour midway.

BCCI agreed to waive that penalty last year once West Indies agreed to play the remainder of the tour. But that favour obviously has been forgotten.

The decision to waive off the penalty on West Indies, interestingly, had come just weeks before Manohar left the BCCI president’s post to become the ICC chairman. Had West Indies sided with BCCI, along with a united Asian bloc (barring Pakistan of course) and Zimbabwe, it could have at least put the brakes on the rollback proposal.

But BCCI was fighting a battle on two fronts. While the BCCI was struggling to implement the scathing Lodha Committee recommendations, their allies were deserting them one by one.

MANOHAR’S ROLE

Manohar obviously plays a huge role here. A number of former BCCI officials compared Manohar’s exit from the BCCI to that of a captain abandoning his ship. What has enraged them further is how Manohar has put the spanner in the wheels by planning the rollback at BCCI’S cost. With over ₹3,500 crore at their disposal in the form of cash and bank deposits, and more coming from the IPL and TV rights income at home, the BCCI can thrive without the ICC’S share.

But they could lose their clout at the ICC that had started two decades ago with Dalmiya facilitating the shift of power from Lord’s to the subcontinent. What goes around though, comes around. It looks like even the BCCI hasn’t been able to subvert that reality.