Indian board certainly deserves a bigger share of the revenue pie

The glee with which the ICC’s decision to roll back the revenue-sharing model that had been agreed upon only a couple of years earlier has been received will hopefully make all those Indians, who in a misguided sense went against it, see how the cricketing world is against the Indians. That even the Britons and the Australians turned their backs is no surprise for they were quite happy to share the spoils as they would get more despite not really contributing anything to the ICC revenues.

Now, they are happy to receive less but it’s still more than the other countries, so it begs the question why was that sharing model wrong when all that the new proposal suggests is a lesser share for all three or the big three as they were referred to by those from other countries. So if the principle of some getting more than the others was not wrong then why change the sharing now ?

We in India are champions at trying to spite some other fellow Indians whom we rightly or wrongly don’t like. For close to nine years, there are some who have tried to finish off the Indian Premier League (IPL) simply because they are not part of it or are not benefitting from it.

Every year there will be reports how the attraction of the league is gone and how the value has gone down and how advertisers are not flocking and the TV broadcaster is losing money and the like. The IPL is reckoned by most overseas rating companies to be one of the most successful leagues in the world, yet we in India are only keen to see it flounder and finish just because we don’t like those running it.

So if India is asking for a greater share of revenue because it fuels almost 90 per cent of the revenues that ICC gets, why is it wrong? It is understandable for other countries to complain about it since they want more without contributing anything but Indians doing it is nauseating — to say the least. For decades, England and Australia held the veto and even today they are a major influence so when the big three revenue-sharing model was finalised and accepted why did only India get the flak and not the other two in the big three? There are countries in there who do not contribute a single cent to the ICC coffers but we are being told that they should get the same as countries that are contributing the most. It’s like telling a person that he maybe investing more than anybody but he should still get the same share of profits as everybody else who is not contributing even a dime.

Has the ICC asked the countries whom they have given the funds what they have done with it, how they have utilised it and has the game of cricket gotten better and followed more and participated in by more people in their countries? Yet India, a country which has made progress and where the following of the game is more than the combined following of the rest of the countries, is being told that they are not entitled to get more.

The drama that went on before the final decision by the Supreme Court to appoint a Council of Administrators and the insistence that one of those administrators who had never attended an ICC meeting before should attend it meant that the BCCI went in to one of the most important meetings without much if any preparation.

The current proposal will come up for a final vote in April and India need to get one more country, besides Sri Lanka, to support it and then it won’t go through. So a lot of cricketing diplomacy is needed over the next couple of months. How the BCCI does that will be interesting to see but one thing they must beware of and that is to avoid another Trojan horse in their midst.

(Professional Management Group)