Vin­ode Mam­chan

A work­ing pa­per for a re­vamped In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) will come be­fore mem­bers as ear­ly as the ICC's quar­ter­ly meet­ing in Dubai on Jan­u­ary 28 and 29 and if it is passed, West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) di­rec­tor Bal­dath Ma­habir, be­lieves crick­et in the re­gion could suf­fer.

The ma­jor news com­ing out of the work­ing pa­per pro­duced by the ICC's fi­nance and com­mer­cial af­fairs com­mit­tee, is that Test crick­et be played us­ing a two-tier sys­tem. If this hap­pens the West In­dies will be in the sec­ond di­vi­sion based on cur­rent rank­ings . An­oth­er ma­jor rec­om­men­da­tion by the com­mit­tee which in­cludes WICB pres­i­dent Dave Cameron, is that the ma­jor pow­er bro­kers of the re­vamped ICC be Eng­land, In­dia and Aus­tralia.

Even un­der the pro­posed two tiered sys­tem Eng­land, In­dia and Aus­tralia will not be de­mot­ed. Teams like West In­dies and New Zealand would find them­selves in the sec­ond tier and this is wor­ry­ing for Ma­habir. If this new work­ing pa­per is passed, sev­en of the 10 full mem­ber na­tions would have to sup­port it.

While not be­ing able to state the WICB's po­si­tion on it, Ma­habir gave his per­son­al view. "Any­time you have a sit­u­a­tion where peo­ple are look­ing to di­vide and rule it could nev­er be good. Look­ing at the pro­pos­als, this is a sit­u­a­tion where pow­er broking and shar­ing will go to three of the mem­bers and this can­not be healthy.

"We are at a point where we need to ex­pand the game and by bring­ing a mod­el that is not in­clu­sive would do dam­age to the sport down the road. This mod­el would on­ly lead to mo­nop­o­lis­ing of the sport and I can­not see how this could be good for crick­et."

Ma­habir said the WICB is sure to dis­cuss this soon to come up with a po­si­tion. "We have not set the date for our next or­di­nary meet­ing but an emer­gency meet­ing may be called. This is very se­ri­ous as with West In­dies play­ing sec­ond tier crick­et, we may lose in­ter­est among the fans and this could prove detri­men­tal."

For­mer New Zealand cap­tain Mar­tin Crowe, com­ment­ing on the is­sue in Cricin­fo, said it would be sad for the West In­dies be­cause they have made a tremen­dous con­tri­bu­tion to the sport of crick­et.

"Crick­et is cycli­cal and to ask the West In­dies to play sec­ond tier crick­et will be un­fair. They had ruled the sport for quite a while and now al­though they are not do­ing that, they have shown glimpses of get­ting back over the last year. They have fall­en away a bit over the last few months but a na­tion that has done so much for crick­et to suf­fer that fate now will be cru­el.

"That is there na­tion­al sport and to re­ceive a blow like that would hurt the game in that re­gion."

Sum­ma­ry of work­ing pa­per

1 New ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee (Ex­Co) to be set up with per­ma­nent mem­ber­ships for BC­CI, CA, ECB, to over­ride all oth­er com­mit­tees.

2 Pro­mo­tion and rel­e­ga­tion in Test crick­et, with ex­cep­tions made in the cas­es of BC­CI, CA, ECB.

3 ICC to be delinked from FTP arrange­ments, with bi­lat­er­al agree­ments on­ly tak­ing over.

4 New fi­nance mod­el of ICC rev­enue dis­tri­b­u­tion.

5 Key po­si­tions in ICC–ICC chair­man, chair­men of Ex­Co and fi­nance & com­mer­cial af­fairs com­mit­tee–to be nom­i­nees of BC­CI-CA-ECB.

6 Re­in­state­ment of Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy in 2017 and 2021 in place of the World Test Cham­pi­onship.