LON­DON, Eng­land – The World Crick­eters’ As­so­ci­a­tion (WCA), the glob­al play­ers body in crick­et, has rec­om­mend­ed sev­er­al ma­jor changes to the way the sport is struc­tured, in­clud­ing a more eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil’s (ICC) rev­enue dis­tri­b­u­tion and a change in the way se­ries and tour­na­ments are sched­uled.

The WCA made the sug­ges­tions in a re­port fol­low­ing a six-month re­view, where it found a pletho­ra of is­sues with the way the sport was be­ing man­aged.

The re­port re­vealed that 83 per cent of glob­al crick­et rev­enue was cur­rent­ly shared be­tween Eng­land, In­dia and Aus­tralia, while two per cent of glob­al crick­et rev­enue was dis­trib­uted to coun­tries ranked 13 to 108.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it high­light­ed that 11 of the last 13 ma­jor ICC events had been won by the same coun­tries.

“Crick­et’s fi­nan­cial struc­ture should sup­port glob­al growth and com­pet­i­tive bal­ance, through a cen­tralised Glob­al Growth and De­vel­op­ment Fund – to be es­tab­lished, un­der­pinned by pooled rights mod­el ap­plic­a­ble on­ly to Core In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et, to fund Core In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et and oth­er glob­al ini­tia­tives,” the re­port said.

The WCA said ICC rev­enue dis­tri­b­u­tion should oc­cur with­in min­i­mum and max­i­mum pa­ra­me­ters, while there al­so need­ed to be stronger reg­u­la­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty on how dis­trib­uted mon­ey is spent in all coun­tries.

More­over, it al­so claims that play­ers do not re­ceive a fair earn­ing rel­a­tive to the wealth they gen­er­ate.

The WCA fur­ther sug­gest­ed that sched­ul­ing be re­vamped to al­low in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic leagues to thrive in­stead of com­pet­ing against each oth­er.

It rec­om­mend­ed that these changes be im­ple­ment­ed from 2028.

“This will al­low in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et to co-ex­ist with the grow­ing DT20 leagues – rather than com­pete with them, there­by en­sur­ing its fu­ture sur­vival. It will al­so en­sure most of the cal­en­dar re­mains for the mar­ket to con­tin­ue to evolve and in­no­vate,” the re­port added.

The WCA al­so heav­i­ly crit­i­cised the ICC’s man­age­ment of the sport as well as its de­ci­sion not to up­date the sport’s reg­u­la­tions.

“Glob­al crick­et needs to come to­geth­er with clear lead­er­ship to re­flect the sport’s chang­ing land­scape and pre­vent frag­men­ta­tion, through mod­ernising the ICC – to en­sure it is em­pow­ered to lead the glob­al game and built on shared own­er­ship, in­de­pen­dence, and rep­re­sen­ta­tion re­flec­tive of the whole sport and the es­tab­lish­ment of a Glob­al Game Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee – as an in­ter­im step to make rec­om­men­da­tions to the game and to the ICC,” the re­port stat­ed.

“Crick­et’s glob­al reg­u­la­tions need to re­flect the new transna­tion­al re­al­i­ty to pro­tect the game and peo­ple in it…”

WCA chair­man, Heath Mills said the re­port was nec­es­sary at this time and high­light­ed sev­er­al is­sues that were plagu­ing the sport.

“This process has brought to light an al­most game wide ap­petite for change and a need to ad­dress the sig­nif­i­cant is­sues with the game’s glob­al struc­ture.

“Whilst there is no sil­ver bul­let, the re­port de­fines the trends, and ma­jor is­sues fac­ing the sport at glob­al lev­el, along with some rec­om­mend­ed so­lu­tions, in­tend­ed to be both as­pi­ra­tional and re­al­is­tic,” Mills said.

“The play­ers have an in­ter­est in the health of the game glob­al­ly, and we look for­ward to dis­cussing and de­bat­ing the re­port over the com­ing months.”

CMC