Things have taken a drastic turn, after a series of increasing complaints against the ICCI, BCCI has warned the ICC that India will pull out of Champions Trophy 2017. Being continuously ignored and treated disrespectfully by the International Cricket Committee (ICC) over various recent decisions, has made the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) very furious. They are even considering the possibility of pulling out of next year’s Champions Trophy, which is scheduled to be held in England.
The animosity reached a whole new level when ICC failed to include BCCI in its recently held finance meeting. The secretary Ajay Shirke of BCCI is extremely angry with this ICC’s doing, he even called it ‘a humiliation’ by the ICC. Shirke told the Indian Express,
“These are the committees where all the important decisions are taken — finance, commerce and chief executives committee; India not having a representative (in those committees) is a humiliation for us. We will tell the ICC, ‘either you amend this or we will decide what to do to protect India’s cricket interests globally’. It could be anything. We may even not play the Champions Trophy. Better sense may prevail, and we may not reach that stage at all. But there are so many options.
This is the latest development to the growing list of grumbles that the BCCI is harboring against the ICC. There have been several other incidents that distorted the relationship between BCCI and ICC. When ICC’s proposed the two-tier Test structure and their decision to disband the ‘Big Three’ reforms, which allowed India to have the biggest edge among all the other cricket playing nations – in the revenue sharing model.
Ever since Shashank Manohar took over the BCCI, he made a lot of changes. The proposal of two-tier system and the removal of Three Revenue model has left BCCI with a bad taste in mouth. The Big Three Revenue Model ensured that BCCI, the Australian Board, the English Board received the big portion of the revenue generated, they profited a lot from it.
Another BCCI official told the Indian Express about the relationship between Indian Board and ICC. When asked about the reason of conflict between ICC and BCCI, he said:
“The problem with the ICC now is that it is acting like a dictator. Apart from the Big Three model that the ICC now wants to change, it is slowly trying to keep the BCCI at bay.”