There are a number of ways of looking at the International Cricket Council’s newly acquired spine. By rolling back the “Big Three” formula that gave India a little over 22% of the revenue (it was 3% before that) from 2014, it struck when the iron was hot. The BCCI is in a shambles, the Committee of Administrators is only a few days old, and this is as good a time as any to cut India’s income by 34%.
You could argue about the actual percentages, but the attempt to rein India in is understandable. Those who have been screaming about the “unfair” treatment need only to remember that the self-designed jump in India’s share three years ago was equally unfair. As the Indian representative at the ICC meeting in Dubai said last week, “Two wrongs do not make a right.”
A second way to look at the new dispensation is to see it in terms of equitable distribution, where every cricket board (except India) gets more money, and the ICC gives the impression of caring about the greatest good for the greatest number.
The ICC, long criticised for being the lap dog of the BCCI can now claim to be the governing body for all cricket, and that too when an Indian, Shashank Manohar, is its (independent) Chairman.
It can be seen as payback time from a body that was bullied, blackmailed and intimidated by the BCCI which distributed its favours like a Maharajah of old. It even interfered in the elections in other countries, hinting not-so-subtly that so-and-so was preferable over such-and-such. You displeased the BCCI at your own peril, as South Africa’s cricket chief once discovered — he was forced to apologise despite being unclear about what he had done wrong.
It can be seen as an attempt at redemption by the Big Three. Both England and Australia were part of the working group that recommended the new models. Manohar has admitted to being embarrassed by the BCCI model three years ago.
I apologise for quoting myself, but in the Wisden India Almanack of 2014 I had written, “Will the next BCCI President be able to handle the backlash from around the world? For, have no fear, backlash there will be. Wheels turn, and if responsibility is divorced from power, the fallout can be catastrophic.”
The backlash
Well, ladies and gentlemen, the backlash is here…
But it is as disturbing as the original “Big Three” takeover. If in 2014, the BCCI put forward an unscientific, poorly argued reason for the change in the percentages in its own favour, now the ICC is doing something similar.
The fact that an international body dealing in billions of dollars is unable (or unwilling) to provide the statistical rationale behind its decisions beyond a vague bow to “common sense” and “simplicity” is worrying.
The ICC has never considered all its members equal even if it now talks about “interdependency”. For decades England and Australia enjoyed veto rights — voted out only a quarter century back — and they rode roughshod over everybody else then. Democracy was never sought or achieved in the ICC at any point. When the then BCCI President N. Srinivasan decided to translate India’s economic power in cricket into more money in the bank, he was merely continuing a tradition. His power flowed from the remote control on television.
By not allowing the Committee of Administrators time to study the proposals to build a case, the ICC displayed a haste that might rebound on it. Administration by bullying is never good for the sport, but it is a well-entrenched ICC technique borrowed in recent years by the BCCI for its own purposes.
There is another ICC meeting in April before the new rules are voted on in June. The current voting on the proposals is 7-2 with Sri Lanka voting with India and Zimbabwe abstaining. An 8-2 vote in June will endorse the change, which means India has enough time to persuade two other countries to vote in their favour. Experience has shown this is usually easily achieved. Promises of more Tests and series are all that it takes. The meeting in Dubai, therefore, might be remembered just as an academic exercise.
If that sounds excessively cynical, it is also a practical way of looking at it, however depressing that sounds and however poorly that reflects on the international administration of the game. Thanks to India’s television audience, support in the stadiums in all cricket-playing countries and access to sponsorship denied to most, it is India who will call the shots. In a reversal of the old line, he who calls the tune gets paid by the piper.
India’s argument has always been that since they bring in the most amount of money into the game, they should be allowed to take the most out of it. Sports administration, like international politics, is increasingly becoming less about what is good and more about what makes business sense. The dollar decides, and India can easily pay for all the carrots they dangle before friends and rivals in the cricketing world.
