 "ICC meet: BCCI loses both revenue and governance vote")
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 an International Cricket Council (ICC) board meeting in Dubai.
India was checkmated by former Board of Control for Cricket in India (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 was 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.
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“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.
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 also a sort of embarrassment for the Committee of Administrators (COA) as it was dealing with a lot of member nations and was extremely confident of pulling it in India’s favour.
The heavy 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.
“Zimbabwe have been promised $19 million by the ICC. On what grounds has Manohar made this promise? But strangely Bangladesh also went the other way. At the meeting, Manohar, in fact, said that the $290 million is a ‘take it or leave it’ offer,” the fuming BCCI official said.
“Now at the special general meeting, there were only two resolutions passed.
Our representative had two mandates. Propose for deferment of the decision which was rejected. And the next option was voting against during a floor test.
“Our aim was to protect India’s interest. Our tone was extremely conciliatory at the meeting for the best interest of the game. But what was shocking was Manohar’s stance,” the official claimed.
On whether India will now withdraw from the Champions Trophy, the official said, “All options are open. They have disrespected the Members’ Participation Agreement that was earlier signed.
“As of now the joint secretary will go back and an emergent special general meeting will be called. He will then apprise the general body about the developments and a decision will be taken.”
Head of COA Vinod Rai, however, refused to comment on whether India would pull out of the Champions Trophy.
“I would not like to comment on a hypothetical situation as none of the BCCI officials have spoken to me,” Rai said.
The official said the BCCI still does not consider it as a setback, as it was “the vendetta of one man (Manohar)”.
“The ICC is yet to tell us what is the basis on which a nation like Singapore stands to gain more. What exactly are the grounds? Can they explain how are they trying to cut down the operational costs of ICC, which is $160 million?” he questioned.
The COA is still in power and it does have the authority to veto a decision by the general body in case they are mulling on a pull-out.