Changing of the guard at ICC meeting next week

There will be plenty on the table when the top decision-makers of the International Cricket Council (ICC) meet next week at Lord's. Ehsan Mani will take over as president of the ICC from Malcolm Gray, as the seats of power in the game's top body shift once again to the subcontinent - Jagmohan Dalmiya was Gray's predecessor.

Dalmiya will be in the thick of things when the issue of the Global Cricket Corporation's (GCC) compensation claims comes up. The GCC represents the official sponsors of the World Cup, who are expected to file for reparations on the grounds that everything they were promised was not delivered to them. England and New Zealand will be in the dock for refusing to play in Zimbabwe and Kenya respectively, and so will Dalmiya, for the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) failure to deliver on the players' rights, which the ICC had promised to the GCC.

The volume of international cricket played will also be up for discussion. Most of the international teams have packed schedules that leave little space for recuperation, and there is hardly anything called an off-season any more. It will be interesting to see what steps the ICC ends up taking in this regard, where the long-term good of the game runs counter to the short-term financial benefits.

The ICC will also examine proposals on how to effectively interact with players' representative bodies. Their failure in this regard came to the fore last year when the crisis over the players' contracts broke, an imbroglio which could have been averted had the ICC consulted with a representative body before drafting them. Maybe next time.