DUBAI // Cricket’s journey towards a vast restructuring of the game that concentrates power and wealth in the hands of its three biggest boards now looks inevitable, as it emerged that as many as seven full members may have already signed off – in one form or another – on the principles and resolutions underpinning the changes.
After two days of heavily scrutinised board meetings, the International Cricket Council (ICC) reconfirmed on Wednesday that the agreement to the guideline principles they laid out on Tuesday had been unanimously agreed upon.
Once the ICC had released its statement on Tuesday evening, as many as four boards – who were instrumental in ensuring the changes were not implemented at these meetings – released statements suggesting the unanimity may not have been so unanimous.
But after the second day of meetings concluded, the ICC president Alan Isaac reiterated there had been unanimity over the principles.
“We had a board meeting today and we reconfirmed that the agreement to those principles was unanimous,” Isaac said at a press conference at ICC headquarters in Dubai on Wednesday.
The cricket boards of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Bangladesh in essence doused the unusually gung-ho nature of the ICC’s statement late on Tuesday, insisting they would have to place the principles in front of their own boards before agreeing to them.
“Where I think there is some confusion [is] when the details put on those principles and they take the form of resolutions in terms of how the principles will apply, there will be a need for some boards to go to their member boards for consultations. In terms of agreeing to those principles, the directors reiterated this morning that it was unanimous.”
The four dissenters were crucial in ensuring no vote took place but it emerged on Wednesday night that the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) may have broken rank and agreed to the specific changes.
At least three officials from within the “Big Three” group of Cricket Australia (CA), the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), as well as the four in opposition, confirmed to The National that the BCB are on board with the changes: whether they have signed off on specific resolutions – as six other boards are believed to have – or just the principles laid out on Tuesday is unclear.
The BCB’s main objection to the changes seemed to centre around a misunderstanding that their full member status was at stake, possibly as a result of a proposal that called for a promotion and relegation system in Test cricket.
That idea has neither been ruled in or out in the new principle guidelines, but the BCB were assured repeatedly in the meetings their full member status would not be affected.
“The BCB has stood firm on [not agreeing] to the two-tier format but they have agreed upon the position paper,” one BCB official said.
Whether or not they have signed off matters little. Their acceptance means seven full members are fully on board with the changes. Just one from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Africa now need to be secured to get the eight votes required for the constitutional amendments.
One board official said on Wednesday he “would be very surprised” if all 10 full members did not ultimately come on board. The dissenting statements, he said, were likely about managing “home audiences to a degree”.
The next meeting is likely to be held on February 8 and it may well be that the vote there is a mere formality, approvals having been secured beforehand.
On Wednesday night, Isaac also expanded on the origins of the draft working paper in which many of the proposals which form the basis of these principles first appeared. The working group of the three boards, he said, emerged as a natural evolution to the Members Participatory Agreements (MPA) all full members have to sign ahead of ICC commercial rights deals (the MPA lays out the terms of every team’s participation in ICC events).
Discussion among the three boards had been prompted by Isaac as long ago as last July (though some from the big three say it had been ongoing for at least two years).
“Round about July last year, I encouraged CA, ECB and BCCI to work together and develop conditions of which all members could happily agree to an MPA. Inevitably that took some time. Round about mid-December, good progress was made and that came together in a document that was presented on January 9. Since then there have been lots of discussions among members and that draft paper has been changed in lots of fairly significant ways.”
Isaac said that he approached these three boards specifically because “you have to start somewhere. To have the three bigger, stronger members in a room coming up with something that was a basis for discussion – and that is what the draft was, a basis for discussion – you have to start somewhere.”
Asked whether he considered any parameters other than their financial strength when choosing the three, Isaac said: “I’m not sure how to answer that really. I made the point that you have to start somewhere and I’m happy to say I encouraged them to work together.
“We’ve had a situation at ICC board meetings where we often go from one meeting to the next meeting three months later and we don’t make a lot of progress. By getting a smaller group together we often make progress.
“It’s not unusual to have a working group to look at a particular issue and this is no different than that. I could’ve added extra people to it, I just felt that the board members from CA and ECB working with the BCCI were more likely to make progress more quickly.”
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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