Why have Committee if higher authorities can simply overrule decisions, BCCI questions ICC
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is set to protest the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) decision to reduce the number of support staff accompanying teams at ICC events to eight. The decision was made against the Cricket Committee’s recommendation to keep the upper limit to 14.
In a meeting in October, the ICC board decided to overrule the Cricket Committee’s recommendation to keep the upper limit for support staff per team at 14 and decided to bring it down to eight. However, the BCCI is not willing to surrender to what they believe is a decision targeting the ‘Big Three’ — India, England and Australia.
“Once the Cricket Committee has decided something which is related to cricket, the next level (of) committees — Chief Executives’ Committee and the Board — have to approve that. When you are going against the recommendation of your own Cricket Committee, why do you have the Committee? When we are spending for them (support staff), then you can’t take a call (based) on some teams that may not require or may not afford (a bigger contingent of support staff),” a top BCCI official told The Indian Express.
“It was done clearly to hit countries like India, England and Australia that send specialist support staff because we feel they need to accompany the team given the competitive nature of cricket today,” the official said.
Meanwhile, the BCCI has other issues on hand ahead of its Annual General Meeting on Sunday. It is understood that the board will nominate former president N Srinivasan as its representative to the ICC and consider a proposed amendment to the constitution that debars a person aged 70 years and above to be appointed to such a role. Another issue facing the BCCI is in the difficulty to form a new Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) as a large number of former players being reluctant to take up the job because of potential conflict of interest issues.
Meanwhile, it is understood that Anshuman Gaekwad and Shantha Rangaswamy — the Indian Cricketers’ Association’s (ICA) representatives to the apex council — will place their demands during the meeting in Mumbai on Saturday. Gaekwad will ask for a pension for all retired first-class cricketers, a one-time benefit for the players who played between 1950 and 1975 and medical insurance and pension for the widows of the former first-class cricketers. Rangaswamy will highlight the wage disparity between male and female cricketers.