BCCI Secretary Ajay Shirke says cricket board is being sidelined in ICC decision making process

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary, Ajay Shirke has said that the BCCI has snubbed the attempts of Cricket Australia (CA), the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and Cricket South Africa (CSA) to forge a partnership to promote their overseas broadcasting rights for Test cricket.

The board will remain unconcerned with the idea of teaming up with the other cricket boards and sell the TV rights for a Test Series as a block. The idea was first floated in an ICC meet in July by a couple of members, but Shirke had immediately dismissed it.

Speaking to the Hindustan Times, he said, “They are desperate to dig into the Indian market, let them do what they want to do. If we are the biggest market in cricket, we are. They are looking to form an independent body (separate from the International Cricket Council) to sell the TV rights, how that can be done is beyond me."

The talk of the downturn in the Indian market because of the takeover of the broadcasting rights by Sony from Ten Sports is not something that the BCCI is amused about.

“The claim that only two major broadcasters are left is not correct. They (ECB, Cricket Australia) have quite a few for them with Sky Sports, BBC, Channel Nine apart from Star and Sony", said the secretary.

The BCCI did not entertain the idea of the two-tier Test format as proposed by the three boards who seem to have formed a partnership. After observing that there were no Indian representatives in a few significant committees including finance, Shirke remarked that the three boards were apparently looking to sideline BCCI from the decision-making process of ICC after their ideas were shot down.

“They are trying to gang up and trying to sideline the BCCI, if they want to run the ICC without the BCCI, let them do it. We are being told that there is one TBC (to be confirmed) seat in the finance committee. What does it mean? After all the decisions are taken and formalities completed then a BCCI member will be included?”, he asked.

Shirke even mentioned that the BCCI is perfectly capable of running its own affairs an idea spoken about earlier by ICC president Shashank Manohar.

“Now that (ICC president) Shashank Manohar has made it clear that BCCI has to look after its own affairs, we will look after our own affairs and we are fully capable of doing it.”