Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians by Boria Majumdar

Author:Boria Majumdar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S India
Published: 2018-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

MISPLACED AMBITION FOR WORLD DOMINATION

THE BIG THREE CARTEL AND THE ICC

Former ICC president Ehsan Mani’s baritone voice made for a nice sound effect on an unusually chilly January morning in Kolkata. ‘Boria, aap log aisa kyun kar rahe ho? [Boria, why are you all doing this?] The game will lose out, don’t you realize?’ ‘Aap log’ [You all], understandably, wasn’t directed at me personally. He meant India or rather specifically the BCCI. The pleasant effect had given way to a sense of apprehension and uncertainty. Ehsan Mani was not one to call and waste time. That he was on the phone, sounding unmistakably concerned, meant something serious was happening.

‘The BCCI, with Australia and England, are trying to divide world cricket and make it into a monopoly,’ Mani said. ‘See if you can help. Everyone in the media should speak out and I am happy to talk to you if you think that might work,’ he concluded.

Clearly, I needed to know more. All I was aware of was that something was going on behind the scenes for some months now.

The first person to give me details of what was going on was Mahendra Mapagunaratne, a lawyer based in Canada, who had already spoken to a few former cricketers on the issue. He was even planning a signature campaign to create consensus once the ICC had made its plans public.

On 9 January 2014, the ICC revealed that it was working on a fundamental structural overhaul of world cricket, which, if effected, would cede ultimate control of the game and its finances to the ‘Big Three’—India, Australia and England.

The overhaul, a brainchild of former BCCI president N. Srinivasan, who was also the BCCI’s nominee in the ICC, was based on a simple premise: Considering India contributes the bulk of the revenue to world cricket, it was only fair that India ran the game and its finances.

Concerns such as whether India could run it alone, or what long-term effects the structural overhaul could have on the game and its health were not something the powers that be were concerned with at the time.

The ‘Big Three’ formula, given its timing and context, worked well in diverting attention from the spot-fixing investigation at home and keeping the flock together in the BCCI. Under this new arrangement, drafted by a working group of the ICC’s financial and commercial affairs committee, India, Australia and England were all set to have overwhelming control over world cricket’s finances and, in turn, stood to earn hundreds of millions of dollars more from the ICC’s central revenue pool. This meant the BCCI would subsequently be in a position to pass on more to the state associations—issues of transparency and accountability notwithstanding—and Indian cricket’s finances would be robust going forward. Srinivasan, the architect, had to be backed to see the transformation through and every attempt was made to protect him from the Supreme Court, and by extension, the Mudgal Committee.

The document also detailed Test match promotion and relegation and suggested exceptions for the Big Three in contravention of all democratic principles.

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