BCCI sends warning to ICC over FTP

BCCI sends warning to ICC over FTP
BCCI sends warning to ICC over FTP

The Indian cricket scenario has been very tense lately, with apprehensions about the presidential election candidate and then with the new FTP proposed by the ICC to be followed from 2018 to 2023.

The new fixture proposed by the ICC has completely neglected all the objections from the side of BCCI and agreed to pass the proposal without the approval of BCCI if need be.
On the account of this move, BCCI has clarified that it won’t be difficult for BCCI to walk out of this approval if their demands aren’t catered to and history has been a witness to this. Online betting markets like, Sportsbooks Review were booming in bets kept from all over the world, whether the new FTP would pan out or not.

FUTURES TOUR PROGRAMME:

Futures Tour Programme refers to the schedule of world cricket for the next 10 years which is designed in a way that each team can play against the other once in their home ground and once away from it during the period of 10 years. Recently, the ICC had decided that they will bring a change in the normal pattern of the FTP and proposed to have annual flagship events instead that is there will be annual T20 world cups and the international 50 over World Cup will be held every 3 years. This new FTP was quite a shock for BCCI.

REACTION OF BCCI:

BCCI, one of the biggest cricket boards of the world, disapproved to this proposal and clearly mentioned that they will not sign the Members Participation Agreement. They also added that it is not impossible for BCCI to do so, as there have been instances when they did not sign the  MPA till such time COA had intervened.

The main problem that BCCI has is that by this move, there will be a major setback in the revenue streaming of BCCI which is extremely essential for them, as they are committed to host a lot of other internal

events like IPL and marquee home bilateral series. If the ICC enters the markets before BCCI every year, then companies like Star Sports, Sony etc will buy the broadcast rights(radio, TV, digital) of ICC before BCCI. There will be a massive downfall because media houses won’t have funds left to buy BCCI rights by the time they enter the market. This will directly affect the home series, under the supervision of BCCI. The board thinks that ICC can’t turn a blind eye to the problems of BCCI in this manner and should definitely tackle it.

WARNING BY BCCI TO ICC:

This new proposal has baffled BCCI which is not a good indicator for the world cricket scenario too. The new President-Elect of BCCI, Sourav Ganguly reasserts that India should get what they “deserve” considering that BCCI provides massive shares to the revenue of ICC. BCCI has also warned that will not accept this move at all, and they won’t hesitate to walk out without signing the Members Participation Agreement. Needless to say, that it is not something new for BCCI.

What is even more baffling is ICC decided to pass this without the approval of New Zealand, Australia, the West Indies, Sri Lanka etc. Thus BCCI can garner support from these stakeholders as well now. 

According to sources, ICC has taken this up as their new agenda for maximisation of revenue. 

Sources have also told us that, the BCCI CEO Rahul Johri had sent an email to Chief Executive of the ICC, Manu Sawhney, calling this move to be “not prudent” at all and also added that this will have widespread “repercussions” in world cricket.

Not just that the BCCI CEO gives a five-pointed explanation as to why this move shouldn’t be supported at all. The first point was that ICC decided to go about this when BCCI was busy restructuring, and that hurry had no explanation. So they think this should not be accepted.

Moreover, BCCI had other bilateral home series to pull off which will become immensely difficult for them. Thirdly, ICC didn’t delve into the matter much, so this decision is “premature” and it has not followed procedures of decision making. The fourth and fifth points were how this is going to have a massive effect on the world cricket, mainly because of increased workload of players as they have to play domestic and international series every year. This would definitely reflect on their performance too, making the world cricket status lower by few notches.

In this battle between BCCI and ICC, we can’t predict the winner already, however, what we can be predicted is that there will be a massive power clash.