Even as the International Cricket Council (ICC) is trying to gather its wits after Shashank Manohar chose to leave the big stage all of a sudden on Wednesday without taking the ICC special Working Group-recommended “Constitution and financial changes” past the finishing line’ — first in April at the ICC board meeting in Dubai and thereafter at the ICC Annual Conference in London soon after the Champions Trophy in June — the stakeholders of the game are wondering what is in store for the game at the top administration level.
Almost all the present ICC Board members had rushed to Nagpur in late 2015 and persuaded Manohar to become the first independent chairman of the ICC and assured him that they will back his proposals to the hilt, including the abolishment of the “Big Three” hegemony of the cricket boards of India, Australia and England.
Manohar resigned as president of the BCCI, a move that did not go down well with a large group of Indian administrators whom the Lodha panel branded as people who had made the BCCI positions a permanent seat of power.
Once Manohar was elected ICC chairman, the same group of administrators cast aspersions on his motive to return as BCCI president for the second time after the demise of Jagmohan Dalmiya. This, despite knowing that Manohar had acceded to the request of Arun Jaitley to bid for the BCCI top post for the second time after media reports threw light about a meeting between former BCCI presidents Sharad Pawar and N. Srinivasan and a conjecture drawn upon that Pawar was eyeing the top post.
As per 3.5(g) of the ICC constitution, in the event that the Chairman shall, for any reason, be unable to fulfil or continue to fulfil his duties, then the Executive Board shall appoint an acting Chairman from within the Executive Board to assume such duties until the conclusion of the next Conference at which a new Chairman is elected or, if sooner, upon the existing Chairman being able to fulfil or continue to fulfil his duties.
Since Shashank Manohar has resigned, the ICC Board will appoint an acting Chairman on April 26 at a meeting in Dubai.
After plenty of action at the BCCI and ICC level in the last two years, Manohar’s resignation has caused a vacuum at the ICC level. Not many among the present ICC Board have the stature to lead the ICC and perhaps even receive the backing of six Board members out of ten.
The ECB’s Giles Clarke is not very popular with the members because he was known to have been chummy with N. Srinivasan. He was however quick to win over the confidence of Manohar.
Last October, at the ICC quarterly meeting in Cape Town, a serious attempt was made by the BCCI top functionaries to encourage Clarke to help dislodge Manohar as ICC chairman. Clarke is the chairman of the important ICC Finance and Commercial Affairs Committee and he was one of the first to call Manohar on Wednesday evening and request him to withdraw his resignation.
So did ICC Board members Dave Cameron of West Indies and Imran Khawaja of Singapore and ICC CEO David Richardson.
Cricket Australia’s David Peever, who is in Ranchi for the third Test, has planned a teleconference with Manohar on Friday morning.
Clarke, Peever and Bangladesh’s Nazmul Hassan are the full member co-authors of the changes to the “constitution and finance matters”; the others being Singapore’s Khawaja and Manohar.
On Wednesday, Hassan said that “the BCB had no objection to the proposed revenue distribution model since the board felt it stood to benefit more than it did under the Big Three model.’’ The BCB and Zimbabwe Cricket are opposed to a few clauses relating to the review of the full member countries and voting rights to independent directors. Zimbabwe fears that in the event of it being relegated to associate category during the once-in-five-years review, it will receive only $20 million for eight years. The changed rule though says that a resolution to change the membership status would require the support of seven full members.
Those who are fully conversant with the proposed changes believe that the governance and revenue sharing models will be taken separately and clause by clause at the ICC board meeting in April and that the revenue sharing model will receive two-thirds majority support.
The BCCI has chosen to present a new proposal and this was announced by the Committee of Administrators’s (CoA) Vinod Rai and Vikram Limaye to Manohar on Tuesday. Perhaps, the BCCI would like to get Rs. 500 crore more than what has been proposed by the ICC’s Working Group.
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