End of the bully era - ICC announces reversal of "Big 3" takeover

The ICC has also decided to remove the permanent positions of the three boards – BCCI,ECB and WA – from the Executive Committee and the Financial & Commercial Affairs Committee. In a statement released to the media after the meeting of the board in its headquarters in Dubai on February 3, ICC said,

“The Board agreed to approve changes to the terms of reference of the Finance & Commercial Affairs Committee and Executive Committee so as to remove the permanent positions for the nominees of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Cricket Australia (CA) and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) on these committees, and to allow fair access to membership for all Full and Associate Member directors, with the sole criteria being the skill, competence and experience of the relevant director.  To that end, the present composition of the committees will be reviewed in their entirety in June 2016.”

The current chairman of ICC, Shashank Manohar, who is also the BCCI president, had signalled his intentions to end the dominance of the three big boards after he replaced N Srinivasan at the helm. The board has also decided to bring back the “independent chairman” position to avoid the conflict of interest issue around it.

“The Board considered amendments that had been made to the ICC’s constitution in 2014 and agreed that, in order to avoid any potential conflicts of interest and to follow best practice principles of good governance, it would seek to re-establish as quickly as possible the ‘independent’ position of ICC Chairman,” the press release said.

“As such, the Board unanimously agreed to propose to the Full Council that a new Chairman should be elected by the Board for a two-year term commencing at the June 2016 Board meeting through a secret balloting process overseen by the ICC’s independent Audit Committee Chairman,” ICC added.

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