Why BCCI is justified in its stand againist ICC

[Malcolm Merlyn]

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First things first: The claim that a Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) pull out from the Champions Trophy would mean ejection from all International Cricket Council (ICC) events till 2023 is plain bunkum. If BCCI pulls out of CT, the event would take a massive hit. But if India are kept out of all ICC events till 2023, ICC itself would collapse!

 

It is worth recalling how the 2007 World Cup in West Indies fell on its face after India made an early exit. The last thing any cricketing nation would want is a repetition of those horror days.

So that brings us to a crucial question: Why is the Committee of Administrators (CoA) pushing BCCI to select the squad? Are they worried that BCCI is hedging till the completion of IPL to announce a pull out?

If they do it prematurely, England and Australia could hit back by pulling out their cricketers from the final stages of the 2017 IPL. As per agreement, consent of parent board is mandatory for all current cricketers.

 

Alternately, has the COA struck an enhanced deal with ICC and now want the BCCI to honour India’s part of it?

Even as a cricketing storm gathers, it is pertinent to ask what those ICC member nations who voted 9-1 in Dubai in early April and pushed world cricket into its current crisis really carved up. Not money on the table for sure; for there was zilch there. Incredibly, they distributed among themselves future revenues, the wealth that ICC had projected they will garner over the eight years up to 2023. The only hitch is there is no money available right now, but they hope US$ 2.5 billion would roll in, most of it from India.

India had assiduously and painstakingly built a huge eco-system for the game. They had nurtured a massive fan following and developed the brand socially and commercially over many decades. This, however, was not to the liking of some within the ICC. Instead of holding BCCI as a shining example of how to grow the game and further enrich it, they ganged up at an opportune time to raid BCCI when it was headless and at its weakest. A veritable stab in the back!

The COA which asked BCCI to select the team for Champions Trophy “with no prejudice to legal options”, is correct when it says that BCCI must cater to the interests of Indian cricket. But what is in its best interest over the long haul and which ensures the rights of future generations is the question.

Bluntly, those that look for long term goals within the prism of next month’s Champions Trophy can’t see the wood for the trees!

Lessons from our colonial past where Mir Jafar gave the British a toe-hold into the sub-continent that led to 200 years of slavery must never be forgotten.

In cricketing context this is the only sport over which India have some control. Surrendering it under any pretext can never be in the long term interests of Indian cricket. Unfortunately it might come to that as interventions and blunders have weakened Indian cricket structure and pushed it into a very deep sink-hole.

Even three years ago not a single country’s board, including that of Pakistan, would have had the gumption to launch an attack on BCCI. If equations are changed wherein even minnows Zimbabwe and Bangladesh are not daunted by BCCI, the reasons are not very difficult to see. This is the legacy that future generations of Indian cricket stand to inherit.

The gang of nine boards that voted to give themselves a substantial hike of future earnings (up to 2023 but this could be template for all time to come) also squeezed India out of US$ 200 million of its share. However, while we know what they are taking away, nowhere is it clear what they are bringing to the table.

In short, they have voted to grab the riches but are under no obligation to generate resources. That some of these countries cannot even generate one single boundary line advertising board is conveniently not mentioned.

In real-life analogy what this means is, if you build a 5-bedroom bungalow and use just one, three others can grab one each and leave the remaining one for you. Their need would be great; they’d have outvoted you on it and in any case they have given you one more bedroom than the others have!

This is the exact logic with which ICC steered the meeting: India brings in the money; others need that money and in any case they have given India more than what others got! Not to forget, it was by a 9-1 vote!

May be ICC should organise a Deloitte audit to reveal how much revenue each of this gang of nine annually brings to the table. Alternately, ICC which brazened the amounts each of these nations would gain if they voted in a particular way must also reveal in as brazen a manner as to how much money these nations would bring during the period 2015 to 2023.

In fact, it would be interesting to find out what Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies would generate in the next six years. For that matter, what would be the contribution of England, Australia and South Africa? After all they are the ones who voted to turn India into one gigantic sweatshop for international cricket.

Currently India cricket has no option but to regularly generate income for the sustainability of others. If they don’t like it, they’d be outvoted and forced to work extra hard to generate more funds. Others can even have a lien on BCCI’s future earnings. If BCCI does not like it, it can once again be put to vote. If they still object they can be again voted down.

It is worth recalling where the ICC stood not so long ago. The BCCI, led by Jagmohan Dalmiya and IS Bindra, had fought a long and hard battle to strip England and Australia of veto powers. These two nations who had run ICC to the ground had done little or nothing to globalise the sport. Cricket was in its death throes.

Subsequently, when Dalmiya took over as chairman of ICC after another hard battle wherein virtually every trick in the book was used to thwart him, he was shocked to find that ICC was broke and had no money to pay even airfare.

It was then that he took it on himself to shore up its finances. Thus was born the ICC KnockOut Tournament in 1998. (The name was changed to ICC Champions Trophy in 2002.) The property was owned by ICC and television deals struck shored up ICC coffers.

Initially the tournament was an ODI knock-out event for Test-playing nations only. Dalmiya decided to have it in neutral venues so that he could spread the game while making money for ICC.

It is this Champions Trophy that could spell the doom of cricket relations if ICC continue to seek ways to kill the golden goose.

http://www.news18.com/cricketnext/news/star-to-icc-few-takers-for-champions-trophy-minus-india-1392547.html

[Malcolm Merlyn]

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An incompetent BCCI can't allow an imperial ICC to take India for a ride

 

When the Supreme Court-appointed Lodha Panel tore apart BCCI’s opaque, clubby structure, the idea was to clean up the world’s wealthiest cricket board, make its administration transparent and professionalise its operations. So far so good.

The Committee of Administrators (CoA) appointed by the Supreme Court was meant to take stock, suggest the way forward and install a new board within the Supreme Court’s clearly articulated parameters.

Uprising

Meanwhile, a Machiavellian uprising was bubbling in Dubai, the headquarters of the International Cricket Council (ICC) which administers the game globally while the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) frames the rules. It’s all very democratic but the underlying ethos is imperial.

For over half a century, the ICC was called the Imperial Cricket Conference. England and Australia made the rules. Their players sledged and abused but were rarely called to account. Indians and other non-white cricketers were punished for the slightest misdemeanour. All that changed 20 years ago.

 

Indian cricket began to generate large streams of television revenue. Jagmohan Dalmiya became the first Indian to head the ICC. Its name had meanwhile been quietly changed to the non-colonial International Cricket Council. The Anglo-Saxon countries (led by England and Australia) bided their time.

With the mountain of TV revenue generated by the IPL from 2008, India had become the superpower of world cricket. It accounted for 70 per cent of global revenue. All cricket-playing countries benefited from the largesse with India justifiably, as the main fount of revenue, getting the lion’s share.

A “Big Three” formula comprising India, England and Australia was set up to co-opt the old Anglo-Saxon powers in the new India-centric governance structure of international cricket and the preferential sharing of revenue. It was always a bad idea. The English and Australians have more practice in co-option than Indians.

They co-opted former BCCI president Shashank Manohar. It’s always better to get a native to put other natives in their place. (That’s how the British ran their Raj in India, co-opting Indian sepoys and princes with the lure of money and the threat of cannon.)

With Manohar established as the ICC’s first ever “independent” chairman — not nominated by any one country — the Machiavellian plan was in place. Manohar promptly reduced India’s share of global revenue from $570 million (Rs 3,700 crore) to $293 million (Rs 1,950 crore). The Big Three formulation was scrapped.

The BCCI, decapitated by the Supreme Court and harrangued by an effete CoA, was at its most vulnerable. The Anglo-Saxons had chosen the moment wisely. Their Indian import, Manohar, had done an exemplary job, even offering with an air of innocent, injured pride to resign last month as ICC chairman, an offer that was naturally turned down by the ICC board.

 

Opaque

The BCCI has proved not only to be opaque but incompetent as well. Its representative at last week’s ICC meeting in Dubai, Amitabh Chaudhary, was comprehensively out-manoeuvred by Manohar. India lost the voting 9-1 (on revenue sharing) and 8-2 (on governance). Manohar deliberately disallowed a discussion on India’s counter-revenue sharing proposal.

Instead he tabled, as if he was doing India a favour, an additional $100 million (Rs 640 crore) to take India’s total revenue share to $393 million (Rs 2,500 crore; over eight years).

That’s still less than 40 per cent of ICC’s global revenue. India’s rightful share should be between 60 and 70 per cent. BCCI has hired a British law firm and drafted a notice to the ICC for violating the Members Participation Agreement (MPA) by making revenue sharing and governance changes without BCCI’s consent.

What next? The BCCI has called for a special general meeting (SGM) on May 7. The option to withdraw from the Champions Trophy, which begins on June 1 in England, will be debated. Run as a personal fief by politicians for decades, the BCCI now has to show both spine and tactical intelligence. It must get the tournament’s lead broadcaster for the Champions Trophy, Star Sports, onside.

Without cricketers like Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni, Indian TV viewership will plummet. So will sponsorship revenue.

Audience

The global cricket audience is predominantly Indian. The lead broadcaster can’t make money if Indians don’t watch. And if it doesn’t make money, neither will the ICC’s other member-nations who live off Indian sponsors. Cricket boards like Pakistan’s are starved of funds. The new sharing revenue agreed by the ICC — which still needs final approval — will provide Pakistan a financial lifeline.

Money made from Indian viewers will in effect be used to save the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) from bankruptcy. The BCCI must stand firm (even if the clueless CoA doesn’t) and call the ICC’s bluff. The ICC has threatened India that if it boycotts the Champions Trophy, it could be disqualified from other ICC tournaments like the World Cup.

That’s an empty threat. The ICC is desperate that India play in the Champions Trophy. It also knows future disqualification of India would be legally challenged — and meanwhile cost member-nations heavily as sponsors flee in the absence of India. The IPL is a financial success because hundreds of millions of Indians watch it. The world’s best cricketers like Steve Smith put aside their arrogance to play in it for the money it earns them.

India has the financial muscle to sculpt a fair world order in cricket. It now needs a firm spine to stand up to, and defeat, the Machiavellis — both foreign and home-grown.

http://www.dailyo.in/sports/icc-bcci-dubai-meeting-indian-cricket-ipl-champions-trophy/story/1/17004.html

[Gollum]

Republic TV will go live in 2 days I think. Minhaz Merchant is closely associated with Arnab in this venture. First issue I want Arnab to take is this BCCI-CoA tug of war. Ratings will be over the roof the first few days at least and other channels aren't highlighting this saga. I want Arnab and co to mobilize public opinion against this treachery. That will hopefully translate into something positive for Indian cricket. 

[Trichromatic]

2 reasons

1. BCCI is taking cuts while other boards are getting same.

2. Other boards would eventually be using this money for the luxuries of their administrators and not for cricketers.