The Supreme Court-appointed four-member Committee of Administrators (C0A) Vinod Rai (Chairman), Vikram Limaye, Ramachandra Guha and Diana Edulji will meet the BCCI officials C.K. Khanna (vice-president) and Amitabh Choudhary (Jt. Secretary) , discharging the duties of the president and secretary, Anirudh Chaudhry (treasurer) and the BCCI CEO Rahul Johri here on Friday (April 21) to discuss the salient features of the proposed changes to the ICC’s Constitution and Financial models.
The ICC chairman Shashank Manohar was also invited to attend the meeting, but he will leave for Dubai on the same day to attend the sessions that precede the ICC CEC (on April 24) and ICC Board (On April 26) meetings.
The meeting between the CoA and BCCI is taking place for two reasons. A few weeks ago, the CoA had sent an 11-page letter declining to accept in toto the ICC Special Working Group’s governance and revenue sharing model, highlighting that it was not convinced about the method applied for determining the revenue sharing model, and in particular the BCCI share being whittled down in excess of the Rs. 900 crore figure that was reportedly accepted by the BCCI’s SGM here in February 19, 2016.
The SGM was assured by the then BCCI president Shashank Manohar that he will not bring down the BCCI’s share below 15 % from a high 21 % plus that was agreed upon by an ICC resolution in 2014. Manohar’s suggestion was supported by former BCCI and ICC president Sharad Pawar and a resolution was adopted then.
And more recently, the CoA had occasions to meet and discuss ICC matters with the chairman of Cricket Australia, David Peever, ICC board director from Singapore, Imran Khawaja in New Delhi (during the fourth India-Australia Test match at Dharamsala) and also the president of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) Dave Cameron during the IPL opening ceremony in Hyderabad. The CoA and BCCI officials also had discussions with the Bangladesh Cricket Board chief Nazmul Hasan and Cricket Sri Lanka chief Thilanga Sumathipala.
The meeting here on Friday will give an opportunity for the CoA to tell-all about its interactions with the foreign cricket Boards to the BCCI office bearers, especially Amitabh Choudhary, named by the Supreme Court to attend the ICC Board. After returning from the ICC Board meeting in the first week of February, Limaye shared his thought that “collaboration and building trust with the ICC and not confrontation” should be the way forward for the BCCI. An expert in financial matters, Limaye did not vote in favour of the proposed changes because he, as a CoA member for four days, did not have time to examine the whole matter, and he became the architect of the 11-page letter that declined to accept the changes proposed in the ICC’s financial model for 2016-23.
It appears that the CoA, the BCCI and majority of its affiliated members are on the same page in regards to the radical changes proposed by the ICC, but the “Big Three” governance model was discarded at the ICC’s Annual Conference in Edinburgh last June with Cricket Australia and England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) walking out of the 2014 resolution and thereafter the ICC Special Working Group met a number of times and decided to share the revenue adhering to the principle of “equity, conscience and common-sense’’.
There was further drama with Manohar resigning as chairman of ICC and then agreeing to continue until the ICC Annual Conference in June when all proposals will be placed before the 105 member general body. Manohar may have given sufficient hints to the CoA and perhaps one or two senior BCCI members of his readiness to increase the BCCI’s share from $ 289 million (Rs. 1,867 crore) , but will Choudhary go beyond the resolutions adopted at the SGM at New Delhi on Tuesday? The first resolution is to ask the ICC to defer all decisions till the annual conference and the second resolution is to summarily reject the changes. One would expect the CoA to impress upon the BCCI and Choudhary to negotiate matters with Manohar. Having had serious discussions with Manohar on the revenue sharing model, the CoA knows the extent to which the ICC will probably agree to revise BCCI’s share. The news on the grapevine is that could be substantial.
Meanwhile, BCCI sources said both Choudhary and Johri spoke to Manohar on Wednesday.
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