A case for a split in cricket?
02-Jul-2014
"It should be clear to all observers that the ICC is moving away from an expansionist vision to a reductionist one," writes Andrew Nixon on CricketEurope. "Associate and affiliate members are a hindrance to what seems to now be the primary goal of the ICC - making money for the full members, in particular the "big three", and especially the BCCI. A sport truly interested in development would be diverting a significant proportion of revenues from global events into development. Cricket is doing the opposite."
The transformative impact on associates and affiliates that cricket being in the Olympic Games will have is significant. Many countries will only provide government funding to Olympic sports, and in some cases that could be quite substantial. Countries that currently get something of a pittance from the ICC - less than $50,000 for most members - could find themselves getting astronomical sums from their governments.
Funding could be tens - possibly hundreds - of times what they get from the ICC. The financial dependence that some associates have on the ICC would vanish overnight. But maybe that's the point - if almost all of your money comes from one organisation, you're not going to do much to rock the boat.