WELCOME TO THE BICCI

GH on the ICC's new boss

Artwork by Fisher Classics

At the recent World Cricket Connects symposium at Lord’s, the chairman of the International Cricket Council, Greg Barclay, commenced proceedings with a speech about the state of the game, optimistic about its successes and clear about its challenges, concluding with the observation that ICC, bedevilled by short-termism and self-interest, was ‘not fit for purpose’.

It was good stuff from New Zealander Barclay, who has been a solid chairman these last four years, and in a sane world such an acknowledgement would have triggered some soul-searching in cricket circles. The solution at ICC, however, has been not to adjust the fit but to change the purpose.  Rather nicely on the anniversary of the birth of Sir Donald Bradman, not that anyone noticed, the ICC laid out its new mission, which is to be the latest plaything of cricket’s number one nepo baby.  After no detectable process whatsoever, without any evaluation of his capabilities or credentials let alone his vision and strategy, Jay Shah of the Board of Control for Cricket in India is to replace Barclay. 

Super shot, that…

So, welcome to the BICCI.  For most, this will seem like same shit, different day.  We all know the Wizard of Id’s Golden Rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.

And, let’s be honest, the ICC has spent a decade and a half dickering opaquely about governance, with the mountain labouring and bringing forth a mouse (‘We need a woman director.  Anyone know any women?  Oh, can you find an independent director too?  I know, let’s make them the same person!  And now she’s gone anyway!!’). 

But because there’s a still a distance between ‘it-is-what-it-is’ and ‘that’s OK’, let’s state the bleeding obvious.  Their collusion in Shah’s ascendancy shows this to be the most supine and captive board in ICC’s history, a bunch of utterly craven enablers, and that includes the representatives from Australia and England.  ICC had actually been quietly getting a few things right in the last little bit.  They’d replaced a rubbish CEO with a good one.  They’d rolled out a strategic plan after years languishing without. They’d concluded a lucrative broadcast deal, even if Star is suffering buyer’s remorse because a merger they’d banked on fell through. They'd finally managed a World Test Championship. They’d delivered some good tournaments (2023, 2024) and are nimbly reorganising another amidst upheavals. All this with a staff the third the size of the best benchmark, World Rugby.  Yet the sorry fact is that member boards of ICC have one ambition only - not the best interests of cricket for all, but of securing inbound tours from India for themselves.  So what a pampered scion of the Indian elites wants, he gets.

Yes, the board will want a round of applause for chucking some money in the kick for Test cricket, even though it’s a paltry ‘$5-10 million’ in a game that now routinely trades in billions.  But we have questions, so many questions.  What now for cricket in the US, so expensively opened up?  What now for cricket in Pakistan, given Shah’s filial bond with the BJP, and that his successor at BCCI looks to be….you’ll love this…..another BJP politician’s son?  What now for ICC staff, given the Indian culture of treating executives as Voltaire said the British treated admirals?  That’ll help get the best people, eh?

Cricket Australia and the England Cricket Board don’t care about these questions.  They just want to watch big three cricket from their hospitality suites, and the rest of the world can suit itself.  International cricket, meanwhile, is in its Ayn Rand’s funeral stage, coffin surmounted by a dollar sign.  The game’s task henceforward will be to make the world safe for Indian capital, and the ICC’s to act as a brand extension of one of the world’s creepier personality cults.  Fit for purpose?  You betcha.