No more ‘big-three’ as India loses vote in ICC meeting

DUBAI: India’s supremacy in world cricket on Wednesday met a major blow as the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was comprehensively out-voted on governance structure and revenue model at the ICC Board Meeting in Dubai.

India was checkmated by former BCCI boss Shashank Manohar, who now heads the International Cricket Council (ICC) as its first independent chairman.

BCCI, which is the world’s richest cricket board, was thrashed 1-9 when representatives of all other member nations, except India’s Amitabh Chaudhary, voted in favour of a change in the governance structure.

India’s opposition to change of the revenue model was also rejected 8-2 by the ICC board with Chaudhary only finding support from Sri Lanka Cricket’s Thilanga Sumathipala.

The BCCI had opposed changes on two counts — ICC’s Governance model, which required a change in its constitution with review of full membership, and a two-tier Test structure.

The major issue was the controversial revenue model, which is set to bring India’s share down to half from $570 million.

Manohar has encouraged a more impartial distribution from the earlier ‘Big Three’ Model where India, Australia and England were the primary earners.

“Yes, the votings are over. It was 8-2 in favour of revamped revenue model and 9-1 in favour of constitutional changes,” a senior BCCI functionary present in Dubai was quoted as saying by Times of India on Wednesday.

“The BCCI has voted against both as we had, in principle, maintained that all these changes are completely unacceptable for us. At this point, we can only say that all options are open for us. We would have to go back to our SGM and apprise the members of the situation,” he added.

It was also learnt that since BCCI clearly rejected the additional $100 million pay-out in revenue, it was once again given the original option of $290 million which is a $280 million cut from the $570 million India had been getting till last year.