The BCCI president and International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman, Shashank Manohar, has three ICC meetings to bring around the 10 full members — including ECB and Cricket Australia — to his idea of governance structure and values, and the revenue-sharing formula.
In an interview to The Hindu recently, Manohar had articulated his standpoint as a result of which a few full members of the ICC have issued statements in support of the ICC chief’s view that is against the three boards of India, Australia and England being vested with Executive powers and a high percentage of distribution of the ICC revenues to these three countries in the 2016-2023 cycle.
Manohar has three ICC meetings lined up in February, April and the annual conference in June next year when, under the ICC constitution, he will make way for ECB’s Giles Clarke.
It was in February 2014 that the ICC adopted resolutions to change the framework of the governance structure and revenue models and the ICC constitution was amended accordingly at its annual conference in Melbourne in June 2014. The past BCCI president, N. Srinivasan, became the first ICC chairman.
The BCCI members may be surprised by the socialistic thinking of their president, but according to sources, all of them thumped the desk when the announcement was made at a working committee meeting in Chennai last year that the BCCI would receive 22 per cent of the ICC revenues for the seven-year cycle, amounting to around Rs. 4000 crore.
An immediate proposal to increase the infrastructure subsidy from Rs. 50 crore to Rs. 100 crore was shot down. At the last AGM in Mumbai, the subsidy was raised to Rs. 60 crore.
Shah’s viewsThere will be opposing views when the matter is discussed at the next BCCI working committee, but former BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah has supported the BCCI president on ICC issues.
“Yes. I am not totally in disagreement with what he has said. We may have to part with some money, that’s true. But, there is substance in what he has said in the context of the distribution of ICC revenues. We have to decide the quantum of sacrifice to be made; that’s to be debated, but we should get more. Australia and England will get around four per cent, but the others getting less than one per cent is not good. India, Australia and England get good money from the media rights, many others do not. We must look at it as they too have to survive.
“With regard to the governance structure, there has to be a democratic process. Only three members with executive powers take away the democratic process.
“In the BCCI, Mumbai and Tripura have one vote each; that’s democracy. Moreover, the ICC’s expenses are high; it functions in a bureaucratic manner,” said Shah, Secretary of the Saurashtra Cricket Association and currently chairman of the National Cricket Academy (NCA) board.
Another former BCCI Secretary Sanjay Jagdale, who resigned at the heat of the IPL fiasco, when CSK representative Gurunath Meiyappan was arrested by the Mumbai police, and at present the president of the Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association, too, offered his opinion.
“I have to discuss these matters with the MPCA committee, but personally I am backing the BCCI president’s views on ICC matters. Cricket has to be promoted and developed all over the world like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and the West Indies. They are not financially well off, but this is my opinion. I have to discuss this with the committee members.”
RelevantCCI president Kekoo Nicholson felt that Manohar’s statements were relevant.
“His answers are extremely relevant in the current scenario, especially on the aspect of what one would pursue as BCCI president and ICC chairman.
“It is clear that Manohar wishes to protect the interests of the common cricket goer as far as Indian cricket is concerned, and also protect the interest of the smaller cricketing nations as far as the ICC is concerned.
“We recently made him an honorary member of our Club, which I thought was long overdue.
“I understand that he is a man of few words and is extremely clear about his direction towards promoting and protecting the interest of cricket in India and globally.
“His individual skills will be put to test as time unfolds in view of the various issues concerning conflict of interest, various factions, zonal politics, etc. as BCCI president and the ICC chairman.”
There will be associations like the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association and a handful of more who could be critical of the position taken by Manohar, but the BCCI, which has always been a president-driven organisation, is more likely to back him to the hilt on all matters, including those related to the ICC.
