The former Indian Captain, Sourav Ganguly, has taken charge as the new BCCI president. Ganguly, when he was the captain of India, was really pro-active and took many brave calls with regard to picking the young players and backing them to the hilt.
But now, he is at the helm as an administrator and decision-making as an administrator needs a completely different level of understanding and vision.
Here are the 5 challenges Ganguly has in front of him as the BCCI president:
#1 Revenue sharing with ICC
When N Srinivasan was India’s representative at the ICC, he had pushed for a revenue sharing model where ICC had to give the BCCI an amount of 570 million dollars per FTP cycle, but as Shashank Manohar took charge of the ICC, he shot down that model. Manohar came up with a new model where India would get only 293 million dollars per FTP cycle.
Since, there was a power crisis within the BCCI in the last couple of years, BCCI couldn’t raise their voice strongly in the ICC meetings regarding the revenue sharing model. But, now with Ganguly in charge, he has all the authority to ask ICC to implement the model Srinivasan had suggested.
The logic behind Srinivasan’s model is that ICC generates most of the revenue because of the BCCI. The BCCI players attract most of the brands and the crowd to the stadium which ultimately results in the revenue for the ICC.
So, if BCCI is helping ICC generate the maximum revenue, they should get the maximum share as well. But, Shashank Manohar doesn’t agree to that as he is of the view that BCCI’s revenue model will get the rich boards richer and poor boards poorer.
#2 Increasing the wages of the domestic cricketers
A first-class cricketer gets 1.4 lakh INR for each game in the Indian domestic circuit. If a domestic cricketer gets to play all the matches for his respective state side in a season, he will earn somewhere around 25 lakh INR.
This is not a significantly smaller amount if we compare it to the salary of the domestic cricketers of other countries, but the cricketers who go on to play international cricket for India earn a much heftier sum.
An Indian international cricketer gets 15 lakh INR for one Test match. If he is not a part of the playing XI, he will still get 7.5 Lakh INR. The Indian internationals also get 8 lakh INR for an ODI and 4 lakh INR for a T20I game.
Ganguly needs to create a bit of a balance between the wages of the domestic and the international cricketers. Obviously, the wages of the international cricketers can’t be reduced as they are bringing accolades to the country.
But, if the domestic cricketers are given a salary hike, it will make them feel they are also a part of the system. Ultimately, they are also trying to put their 100% on the pitch at whichever level they are playing.
#3 Organizing Day-Night Test matches in India
The popularity of test cricket is increasingly going down around the world and it’s a challenge, not only for the ICC, but all the member boards to find ways to bring some excitement back to the longest format of the game.
Organizing day-night test matches is one of the ways to do it because the reason why most of the people keep themselves away from test cricket is because it’s a 5 day format and people can’t skip their jobs or classes to come to the stadiums.
If a test match is a day-night affair, people will have time to come to the stadiums. But, the biggest problem with day-night test cricket in India is the dew. Most of the venues in the country get a lot of dew at night and the pink ball goes really soft and wet as the dew takes over.
Once the pink ball goes soft and wet, the bowlers almost go out of the play as they can’t control their lengths. While, for the batsmen, it gets really easy as the ball starts skidding on to the bat nicely.
#4 Winning the ICC Tournaments
India have played some consistent white ball cricket in the last 6 years. They are the only international side who have managed to get into the knockout round of each and every ICC tournament since 2013. But, since the Champions Trophy 2013 glory, India have never won an ICC tournament.
Here is India’s record in the knockouts of the ICC tournaments in the last 5 years –
World T20 2014 Final: Lost vs SL
World Cup 2015 QF: Won vs BAN
World Cup 2015 SF: Lost vs AUS
World T20 2016 SF: Lost vs WI
Champions Trophy 2017 SF: Won vs BAN
Champions Trophy 2017 Final: Lost vs PAK
World Cup 2019 SF: Lost vs NZ
Out of the last 7 knockout games that India have played in the ICC tournaments, they have won just 2 and both of them have been against Bangladesh. Ganguly needs to lay a roadmap so that India clinch the ICC trophies.
#5 Removing “conflict of interest” cases in the BCCI
There have been numerous cases of conflict of interest in the BCCI in the last few years which was one of the main reasons why the Supreme court of India had to set up the Committee of Administrators (CoA).
Now that the office bearers are back in the board again under the leadership of Ganguly, the Bengal Tiger will have to make sure that people don’t hold multiple posts at the same time.