Cricket's Indian summer looks set to linger after BCCI lead 'Big Three' in ICC power coup

The cricket world is being forced to deal with the game's disgraceful politics, writes Malcolm Conn.

N. Srinivasan, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, is at the heart of the ICC move.

Cricket's latest "crisis" should be met with a laugh.

That deep, sarcastic laugh which greets announcements like FIFA holding its 2022 World Cup in the 101st-ranked soccer nation of Qatar, in summer.

Or recent and future Essendon coach James Hird, who disgraced his club and the AFL with an unfortunate peptide obsession, receiving $1 million for doing nothing this year before returning to his job.

Now the bits of the cricket world forced to deal with the game's disgraceful politics are up in arms about India, Australia and England taking over the International Cricket Council, which in theory is supposed to run the game.

But of course the ICC does not run cricket, India does with rivers of gold and an iron fist. The notion that the ICC is somehow a democratic organisation administered by 10 so-called Test playing countries for the greater good of the game is utter nonsense.

The so-called "Big Three" - India, Australia and England, the only cricket countries which run at a profit - presented a convoluted proposal at a two-day ICC executive board meeting which would ensure the triumvirate receive more money and more power.

Indian opener Virender Sehwag raises his bat at the last World Cup, a money-spinner for the ICC.

This left the "small seven" - South Africa, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, New Zealand, West Indies, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe - in a "like it or lump it" situation.

The ICC put out a statement on Wednesday announcing "unanimous support for key principles" of a watered down takeover with a final decision expected at next month's meeting.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India, under president N. Srinivasan, decided it was sick of bankrolling the rest of the cricket world, most of which are lame ducks.

India generates 80 per cent of cricket's wealth. The only way most cricket boards survive, and the only reason most Australian players are paid between $1 million and $2 million a year, is because tours by India generate huge television rights.

If India refuses to tour, that country's cricket board basically goes broke. Ask Cricket Australia when it rolled over to the BCCI during the 2007-08 Andrew Symonds Monkeygate scandal for fear India would quit the tour.

No principled fight in support of Australia's players or against racism there.

The great, side-splitting irony of India, Australia and England climbing into bed together is that on many occasions during the past two decades they sat on opposite sides of a sometimes ugly political and racial divide.

A frosty handshake between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds after the infamous SCG Test.

To simplify sometimes fluid alliances, the Afro-Asia bloc increasingly dominated the ICC, which was best highlighted three-and-a-half years ago when Australia and New Zealand nominated former Prime Minister John Howard as the ICC's next president.

This should have been a fait accompli under the ICC's rules but South Africa and Zimbabwe decided they didn't want Howard. With India and the other Asian nations on side, the ICC's rules were torched along with its credibility, again.

So feel no sympathy for those jilted members of the Afro-Asia bloc who were happy to run cricket as their personal fiefdom in the way England and Australia did during colonial days.

This latest shotgun marriage proposal is unlikely to be worth the paper it is written on.

India has no qualms about instant divorces around the ICC board table.