BCCI grabs biggest pie

Democracy is desired fervently by the powerless and the downtrodden, not kings and princes; charity is the need of the poor and the dispossessed, not the oligarchs of the world; humility is the trait of the weak, not the strong and powerful. Thus, says Nietzsche, ‘slave morality’ is the font of all traits deemed ‘virtuous’— an attempt, through cautious subversion, to wangle a better deal from the ‘masters’ of the world’s power system. Humbly is the way to do it.

But no one likes to eat the humble pie — and certainly not a minister in the Union Government of India. But NKP Salve — the Indian cricket board (BCCI) president in 1983 — had to eat the humble pie that year, when his request for two extra passes for the World Cup final were turned down by the organisers. The day after the final, which India won, Salve met his counterpart from Pakistan, and the Asian Cricket Council was born later that year. That was the beginning of subversion against the power centre of cricket. The idea was to create a counterpoise to the elite of world cricket — England and Australia, primarily, who controlled the levers of power.

In the good old days, the Imperial Cricket Council (ICC) governed world cricket and the national associations of Australia and England enjoyed the power of veto in it, and top cricketers from England did not tour India because of lack of good hotels and satisfactory ‘guarantee money’ to be earned here. It was an unequal world.

The ICC still governs world cricket, but ‘Imperial’ has been replaced by ‘International’, there’s a semblance of democracy in it, but it still is an unequal world. The BCCI is firmly entrenched at the top of the table, not vulnerable to removal through coup or vote — not owing to its own superpower, but also due to the greed of the other cricket nations.

The BCCI is set to earn roughly US $230 million per year from the ICC’s net surplus earnings from its next four-year commercial cycle, 2024-27. This represents a massive 38.5 per cent of the ICC’s annual earnings of $600 million.

What of England and Australia, the one-time superpowers of the sport? Under the proposed revenue-sharing model, England’s earnings would be ‘merely’ $41.33 million, or 6.89 per cent of the total profits; Australia would get around $37.5 million, i.e. 6.25 per cent of the ICC’s earnings. Among the other nine full members of the ICC, Pakistan is the only one set to make over $30 million — $34.51 million, or 5.75 per cent of the total. The other eight full members — including the strong South Africa, New Zealand and Sri Lanka — would receive less than 5 per cent each.

Out of the total expected annual earnings of $600 million, the ICC’s 12 full members will receive $532.84 million (88.81 per cent), and the associate members would get the remaining $67.16 million (11.19 per cent).

Nine years ago, the Big Three revenue-sharing model — in which India, England and Australia proposed to grab a large chunk of the profits — had been devised by then BCCI president N Srinivasan and his counterparts from England and Australia. It envisaged a 20.3 per cent share for India from the ICC’s profits; the share of England and Australia was much smaller. The idea of the Big Three collapsed in 2017, when all the other cricket boards got together to outvote the BCCI — 9-1, no less! — when they approved a new financial model.

A repeat of such audacious voting against the BCCI is unlikely to take place when the new model comes up for approval in the ICC, and the reasons are obvious: financial pragmatism, business sense, self-interest, greed — whatever you may wish to call it.

There are good reasons for greater acceptance of Big One than Big Three: In 2014, the highest profit share was proposed for the BCCI on the basis of an estimate that India contributed over 70 per cent to the ICC’s revenues, but there were no verifiable metrics cited.

Now, though, the ICC has actual figures to work on because for the first time ever, the media rights were sold separately across five global regions recently. The sale of the ICC broadcast rights from the Indian region earned the ICC a mind-boggling $3.1 billion for four years. The figures for the rest of the world have not been disclosed, but industry experts believe that they won’t add up to more than 18 per cent of the ICC’s earnings through TV rights. The notion that over 80 per cent of the ICC’s income comes from the Indian market has got mathematical legitimacy.

The new profit-distribution model is based on four criteria: cricket history, performance in both men’s and women’s ICC events over the last 16 years, contribution to the ICC’s commercial revenue, and an equal weightage for the status of being a Full Member. The third criterion is, obviously, the clincher.

There was stiff resistance to the Big Three model, but there ‘may be little appetite to challenge’ the Big One model because, as former England captain Mike Atherton wrote, every country will be getting a larger amount (in absolute terms) than now.

For a democrat, the idea of the rich getting richer, and the gap between the richest and the poorest groups widening, is abhorrent. But only pure sport — beautiful symphony on the field of play — can be the object of idealism; the business of sport, though, has nothing to do with idealism and everything with ‘filthy lucre’.

BCCI is dominant now, as England-Australia once were. Two wrongs don’t make a right — but no one would rather be a humble beggar than an arrogant billionaire.

Dhoni’s long goodbye

And that brings us to MS Dhoni, making people cry at a cricket stadium near you. Wonder of wonders, he made even the hard-as-nails, tough and pragmatic Sunil Gavaskar cry recently! After his final home game of this year’s IPL in Chennai recently, Dhoni ran a lap of honour even after losing the game, indicating an IPL farewell. Gavaskar ran to the ground to get Dhoni’s autograph, which he displayed later and said with eyes brimming: “If I know I have last few moments left in my life, so before I die, if I get two minutes, I would revisit two great moments: Kapil Dev lifting the 1983 World Cup Trophy and MS Dhoni hitting that winning six in the 2011 World Cup final… I will die peacefully.”

Gavaskar certainly has come a long way since 1983, when his belief in the primacy of Test cricket was absolute, when he thought so little of the World Cup win that he detailed it in only a few lines on one single page in his book ‘Runs ’N Ruins’, published in 1984. But it would be wrong to call Gavaskar a hypocrite — 40 years is a long time, and we reassess our ideas, evolve and change. Gavaskar, his comments suggest, is a white-ball fanatic now.