Suspended BCCI chief to become ICC chairman

Annual conference to address growing corruption issues.

SYDNEY: Suspended Indian cricket chief Narayanaswami Srinivasan is expected to be anointed as the new International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman at this week’s annual conference in Melbourne which is set to address growing concerns about corruption in the sport.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has confirmed Srinivasan will stand as chairman of the ICC despite being suspended by India’s Supreme Court as the country’s cricket chief.

Srinivasan – seen as the most powerful man in world cricket – was among 13 people named in a damning report into corruption allegations in the Indian Premier League (IPL).



The IPL T20 competition has been embroiled in allegations of illegal betting and spot-fixing, including against Srinivasan’s son-in-law.

Despite the scandal, BCCI Secretary Sanjay Patel confirmed Srinivasan would go to Melbourne and was expected to be anointed ICC chairman.

“By the month end, India will take a leading role in the ICC,” Patel was quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald as saying. ‘Srinivasan is going.

“There is no Supreme Court bar on him. Both of us are going to Melbourne. In the last four months we have settled [the issue] with all the full members of the ICC and convinced them about the new structure of the ICC which would be followed in the coming years.”

Srinivasan’s likely ascension to the head of the ICC follows controversial changes last February to the governance of the global governing body, which handed the majority of the powers and revenue to the sport’s ‘big three’ nations — India, Australia and England.

Also on the ICC conference agenda is a code of ethics for the executive board, which is expected to be approved by its members to provide the framework under which the new regime will operate.

“The key change to the code will be to assert that executive board members are at meetings not as independent directors of the ICC but as representatives of their home boards,” said ESPNcricinfo.

“[It’s] a distinction that takes the game’s global governing body back to the status of a ‘members organisation’.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 23^rd, 2014.

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