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If you are wondering why there have been so many salutary messages pouring in for Indian cricket supremo Jay Shah lately, then you have clearly not kept yourself updated.
Shah has managed what very few Indian cricket honchos have managed in the past. He has been elected the International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman without any rancour, or contest, and has complete support from his comrades from all over the world.
This election underlines the kind of hold Shah and more importantly, India has on world cricket. It is hard to imagine that we have come thus far in such a short span of time in cricket’s history that an Indian has gained the total power of the sport.
How the Times Have Changed
Just over four decades ago when the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI's) then-president NKP Salve requested extra tickets for the 1983 World Cup final, he was refused. He then teamed up with what was then the Board of Control for Cricket in Pakistan (BCCP) to snatch the World Cup away from England. It was no mean feat because the ICC at the time was governed by the veto power of England and Australia.
The stranglehold was once again broken in 1993 when Jagmohan Dalmiya and Inderjit Singh Bindra brought the 1996 World Cup to the subcontinent. This was the final body blow to the veto power of England and Australia.
This led to the ICC being truly democratised with Dalmiya taking over as its first president from outside England and Australia or even West Indies. That led to a wave of landmark reforms which truly opened the game to a wider audience.
Dalmiya’s presence led to a key focus on:
Globalisation of sport
Bundling of TV rights
Carving out the identity of ICC events
Start of the ICC Champions Trophy
The ICC truly became a world governing body under Dalmiya and that too with a small staff based out of the Lord’s, the mecca of cricket.
The Other Indian Heads of the ICC
The other Indian heads of the ICC, including Sharad Pawar, N Srinivasan and then Shashank Manohar also had big impacts in their own way on the running of the game.
By the time Pawar took over, the ICC HQ had moved to Dubai and was firmly in charge of managing several events. The ICC had adopted a true corporate structure with a vision, mission and strategy in place.
In many ways, however, Srinivasan was a trendsetter because he became the first independent chairman of the ICC under a slew of reforms undertaken before he took over. The game also became a slightly top-heavy organisation with a special focus on reducing the clout of the ICC with the Big Three – England, Australia and India, gaining total control. The Asian bloc had withered away over continued political and diplomatic tensions leading to the emergence of a new bloc.
Manohar, on his part, took his role as the independent chairman a little too seriously and played a part in undoing everything that Srinivasan set to undertake. This led to several nervous moments between the Indian board and Manohar.
Where Will Jay Shah’s Leadership Take Cricket To?
In the backdrop of all this, when Shah takes over on 1 December 2024, there will be renewed interest in seeing where his leadership takes the game. He ran Indian cricket for five years with complete authority. He would make grand announcements on social media about policy changes. All information about the game in India was held very close to the chest, with very little being offered. But the stakeholders of the game completely adored Shah.
The big achievements of Shah at the BCCI as secretary or supremo were:
Renewed focus on women’s cricket
IPL’s big commercial deal
Renewed focus on domestic cricket
National Cricket Academy (NCA)’s new HQ
It was easier for Shah to push things along because he had total control of the Board with little or no opposition in sight. Unlike the BCCI though, at the ICC, Shah will have a different structure to deal with.
The ICC is a corporate organisation with a CEO leading a strong senior management team and a band of around 70 professionals. Then there are various committees, some of which Shah has been part of and has even led. These committees report to the ICC Board of Directors, comprising representatives of 12 full-member boards, three associate representatives and one independent director.
So, there is a procedure that will need to be followed for Shah to push through reforms or changes in the game at a global level. Shah has already indicated that the globalisation of the sport is very much his agenda, along with managing the changes in technology and growth in women’s cricket. One interesting bit was that Shah is also keen on the ICC taking control of differently-abled cricket. In 2028, cricket is also headed to the Los Angeles Olympics. In short, cricket is at the cusp of massive changes, what with the continued debates about the future of Test and ODI cricket.
The Unenviable Task Ahead
The idea of a Test fund is good in theory to support the lesser sides, but the Big Three model set in motion in 2014 pushed the sport away from the smaller cricketing nations. It will be nigh impossible to turn the clock back to before 2014 to bring some parity in the sport.
Unfortunately, the sport is one country, that is, India driven and that limits or narrows the opportunity to innovate or tinker with anything. The sport also has had a leadership vacuum over this past decade and that is reflected in decision-making or on the ground like during the recent Men’s T20 World Cup.
Shah, therefore, has the unenviable task of heading the organisation and being the ICC’s independent chairman rather than India’s representative on the Board of Directors. So whatever his individual position as the ICC chairman, a decision on the future of the 2025 Champions Trophy in Pakistan will have to come from a neutral position. The good thing is unlike at the Indian level, in the ICC, there are various checks and balances thanks to professional set-up.
Now, with questions being raised about the conduct of the Men’s T20 World Cup in the US, the structure of the ICC will also come under scrutiny. Will a shift of the ICC HQ from Dubai be one of Shah’s first initiatives? Or will he push for the World Test Championship (WTC) final to be moved away from England? There are several such initial thoughts that can take up Shah’s mind space, but he cannot push these changes through without support at every level, especially the Board!
An Eye Must Be Kept on Developments in BCCI
Shah will also have one eye on developments at his beloved alma mater, the BCCI, and the way it will be run after his exit. Unlike what everyone assumes Shah is not moving bags and baggages to Dubai, he will only occasionally travel to the ICC HQ. A major part of rather all the work will be done by the CEO of the ICC and his team, which will be a big change in the way Shah has run cricket bodies in India.
Back in India though, things will hardly change even after Shah moves to a bigger role in the sport. The systems will remain the same as before, except for one big name missing in Shah. His replacement can be anyone from Delhi’s Rohan Jaitley to BCCI treasurer Ashish Shelar, or even Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA) president Dhanraj Nathwani.
The big focus in the coming days before Shah exits the BCCI will be on putting in place a smooth transition to a new regime with enough and more lead-in time for the new person to take charge.
In many ways, this is, therefore, a turning point in the game’s history not just in terms of India but also globally. You must be really living under a rock if you are unaware of the tectonic shift in the sport that led to Shah’s elevation.
The congratulatory messages for Shah now do make sense because this is truly a historic moment that came through incidentally on the birth anniversary (27 August) of cricket’s pioneer, the iconic Sir Don Bradman.
Need one say anything more!
(Chandresh Narayanan is a senior cricket writer. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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