Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) pres­i­dent Dr. Kishore Shal­low be­lieves the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil’s (ICC) fi­nan­cial dis­tri­b­u­tion and bi­lat­er­al broad­cast­ing rev­enue mod­els should be re­viewed to pro­vide greater ben­e­fits for small­er crick­et­ing na­tions but in­sists the re­gion­al gov­ern­ing body re­mains com­fort­able with its cur­rent arrange­ments.

Shal­low was re­spond­ing to the re­cent de­bate sur­round­ing the ICC’s rev­enue-shar­ing struc­ture af­ter CWI chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Chris Dehring de­scribed the ex­ist­ing sys­tem as un­fair, with for­mer CWI pres­i­dent Dave Cameron al­so sup­port­ing calls for change.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports on Mon­day, Shal­low said he be­lieved Dehring’s com­ments may have been tak­en out of con­text while em­pha­siz­ing that CWI con­tin­ued to en­joy a pro­duc­tive re­la­tion­ship with the Board of Con­trol for Crick­et in In­dia (BC­CI).

“I sus­pect it was sort of tak­en out of con­text what the CEO (Chris Dehring) said,” Shal­low said.

“We are ob­vi­ous­ly very ap­pre­cia­tive of our part­ner­ship with In­dia and BC­CI in par­tic­u­lar. And, in fact, this tour has been a very suc­cess­ful one for us both on and off the field.”

Shal­low point­ed to spon­sor­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties se­cured dur­ing the re­cent In­dia tour, not­ing that the size and com­mer­cial in­flu­ence of the In­di­an mar­ket had helped CWI at­tract part­ners for the One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al and Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries.

He said the re­gion­al board had been able to cap­i­tal­ize com­mer­cial­ly on bi­lat­er­al se­ries in­volv­ing In­dia, whether played in the Caribbean or on In­di­an soil.

How­ev­er, Shal­low ac­knowl­edged that the ex­ist­ing com­mer­cial arrange­ments could be im­proved to pro­vide small­er crick­et boards with a greater share of the fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits gen­er­at­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et.

“I think the point that Chris was mak­ing, or he tried to make, was by and large an amend­ment to the com­mer­cial mod­el would help small­er mem­bers, the likes of Crick­et West In­dies, New Zealand, and so on,” he said.

“It’s some­thing that I’m sure is top­i­cal at the board lev­el of the ICC. And maybe in the com­ing pe­ri­od, when there’s a dis­cus­sion around that, who knows, it may be re­vised.”

Un­der the cur­rent bi­lat­er­al broad­cast­ing arrange­ments, the board host­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al se­ries gen­er­al­ly re­tains the rev­enue gen­er­at­ed from the broad­cast rights. This means CWI keeps the broad­cast­ing in­come when it hosts In­dia in the Caribbean, while the BC­CI re­tains those rights when the West In­dies tour In­dia.

Shal­low ac­knowl­edged that CWI did not re­ceive a share of In­dia’s bi­lat­er­al broad­cast rights but said the re­gion­al board still ben­e­fit­ed fi­nan­cial­ly from tour­ing the coun­try through spon­sor­ship and oth­er com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“When we host In­dia, this is one of the se­ries that we gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue from,” he said.

“Though we don’t get a share of their broad­cast deal, we do ben­e­fit from them fi­nan­cial­ly from the tour.”

The de­bate over broad­cast­ing rights has his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance for West In­dies crick­et.

In 1997, the ICC vot­ed to change the com­mer­cial arrange­ments gov­ern­ing bi­lat­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, mov­ing away from a sys­tem that pro­vid­ed vis­it­ing teams with guar­an­teed tour­ing fees to­wards a mod­el un­der which host boards re­tained the prin­ci­pal broad­cast­ing and tick­et­ing rev­enues.

The pro­pos­al was re­port­ed­ly ap­proved by nine votes to one, with the West In­dies stand­ing alone in op­po­si­tion. The de­ci­sion was crit­i­cized at the time as po­ten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing to the fi­nan­cial in­ter­ests of the re­gion­al game, which had pre­vi­ous­ly ben­e­fit­ed from its con­sid­er­able in­ter­na­tion­al draw­ing pow­er.

The is­sue re­mains rel­e­vant un­der the ICC’s 2024–2027 fi­nan­cial dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el, which re­port­ed­ly al­lo­cates In­dia ap­prox­i­mate­ly 38.5 per cent of the gov­ern­ing body’s an­nu­al rev­enue, com­pared with 4.58 per cent for CWI.

Shal­low, how­ev­er, stressed that the dis­cus­sion should not be framed sole­ly around In­dia’s fi­nan­cial in­flu­ence, point­ing to the sim­i­lar arrange­ments that ap­ply when the West In­dies tours oth­er coun­tries.

The re­gion­al team is prepar­ing to tour Bangladesh for a two-Test se­ries, where the Bangladesh Crick­et Board will re­tain the do­mes­tic broad­cast­ing rights un­der the same host-coun­try prin­ci­ple.

Al­though Bangladesh may not of­fer the same com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties as In­dia, Shal­low said CWI would still seek to ben­e­fit from spon­sor­ship and oth­er part­ner­ships as­so­ci­at­ed with the tour.

“This is why I don’t want it to be unique­ly about In­dia. Be­cause we are now tour­ing Bangladesh, and it’s a very sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion in terms of the rev­enue mod­el,” he said.

Shal­low al­so praised In­dia’s will­ing­ness to tour oth­er crick­et-play­ing na­tions, not­ing that the BC­CI’s glob­al in­flu­ence and com­mer­cial strength had helped fa­cil­i­tate in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et in sev­er­al ter­ri­to­ries.

He said CWI was ex­cit­ed for the Bangladesh se­ries, ex­press­ing con­fi­dence in the West In­dies Test team’s re­cent per­for­mances and hop­ing the play­ers could pro­duce a strong show­ing and chal­lenge for a se­ries vic­to­ry.

In­dia has al­so con­firmed a re­turn tour to the Caribbean in 2027, pro­vid­ing an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for CWI to gen­er­ate com­mer­cial rev­enue.

While main­tain­ing that the re­gion­al board was sat­is­fied with the out­come of its re­cent In­dia se­ries, Shal­low agreed with the un­der­ly­ing ar­gu­ment that the in­ter­na­tion­al game’s fi­nan­cial arrange­ments should re­main open to re­view.

“Again, the point made by Chris is one that is valid in that there needs to be a re­view of the over­all fi­nan­cial mod­el. And that should al­ways be on­go­ing,” he said.