DUBAI // Associate and affiliate members such as the UAE have been assured they will not be worse off financially under a new set of proposals set to change the financial landscape of the global game.
The cricket boards of Australia, England and India have put together a set of resolutions, likely to be pushed through as early as February, which carry financial implications for the second tier of cricket nations.
One estimate of how much associates stand to lose in this new world was provided by the former International Cricket Council (ICC) president Ehsan Mani, in his response to the leaked draft report that outlined the “Big Three” boards’ plans.
“The largest losers are the Associate & Affiliate members who will be US$312.5m [Dh1.1 billion] worse off under the distribution proposed in the paper,” Mani worked out.
In a release issued on Tuesday, the ICC laid out the new financial guidelines – without specific details – for associate and affiliate members. “A larger percentage from the increasing Associate Members’ surplus will be distributed to the higher performing non-Full Members.”
On Wednesday night, at a news conference at ICC headquarters in Dubai, David Richardson, the ICC chief executive, dismissed Mani’s calculations.
“They will not be $300m worse off,” he said. “There hasn’t been any agreement on the financial model at this stage. But in the proposals they are much better off than they were before. They will be $300m worse off if we don’t get any money for the next rights cycle.”
Richardson did concede though that the better teams in the second tier will get more of that share, potentially at the expense of those below them.
“The better performing teams will get more of that Associate surplus and that might be a greater percentage going to better performing teams. Unless we get less money than before, they will definitely be better off than before.”
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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