Limaye to vote, office bearers for deferral

MORE PROFIT-MAKING India tours and a suggestion that a revenue cut for India won't bode well for the development of the game internationally were some of the back channel attempts made by Indian board officials to their counterparts in Dubai, a day before a crucial ICC meet on revenue-sharing.

However, the prevalent mood in ICC is for change, and the nine other countries are going to push for abolition of the 2014 Big Three model that had India, England and Australia garnering a giant share of ICC revenue.

The Indian cricket board has finally decided that Vikram Limaye, from the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators, would represent the BCCI in the meeting. Limaye is expected to express India's continued opposition to the current ICC chairman Shashank Manohar's plan to rollback the Big Three model. Instead, Limaye will stand by former BCCI president N Srinivasan's proposal, by which India stood to gain $507 million (20.3% of ICC revenue) as opposed to $357 (14.3%) millions if the rollback takes place. The BCCI know that the decision

might not come in India's favour and they have counselled Limaye to request the ICC to defer the decision on revenue-sharing to the July meeting.

Perks of India tours offered

On Thursday in Dubai, the two BCCI office-bearers, Amitabh Choudhury and Anirudh Chaudhury, met representatives of other member nations in an effort to push the all-important voting on the revenuesharing issue to July. Those privy to these informal talks say the BCCI'S pitch was about

how the "rollback" was a step taken in haste as it hadn't even been taken to the financial committee of the ICC. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a non-big 3 member said the BCCI members, during negotiations, tried every trick in the book to alter the overwhelming mood of change in the ICC.

Besides extending perks - more profitmaking India series – they also dropped a hint that "a revenue cut for India wasn't good for the overall development of the game" while painting a gloomy fallout of scrapping of the Big 3 model. However, this time the tone of the Indian office-bearers stayed cordial compared to the past as they repeatedly insisted that their opposition to the amendment was only because of the general mood of the BCCI members back home and their arguments were dictated by the mandate entrusted to them.

Mood for change in ICC

It was certainly a tough ask as the new model, backed by Manohar, promised a bigger slice of revenue for the majority of ICC members. In turn, the chief critic of the Manohar model, India, would see its share shrink by 6 per cent, but still get about Rs 2500 crore. The mood in the ICC is for change. A member of a Test-playing nation stated that irrespective of BCCI trying to change peoples' minds in Dubai, many have decided to back Manohar.

“We all know in what circumstances the 2014 model was forced on the countries. We all felt that justice was not done to smaller countries. So when Manohar came with the proposal to scrap the Big Three model, we all were happy. You can ask us, 'why did you support Srinivasan then'? We had no choice, no option other than saying yes,” the member said on condition of anonymity.