Wally Edwards one-on-one

Cricket Australia Chairman Wally Edwards answers questions posed by cricket.com.au senior writer Andrew Ramsey in relation to the proposed changes to the International Cricket Council’s structure.

Is it true that this proposal essentially paves the way for the big three cricket nations – India, England and Australia – to take control of the game and carve up a lion’s share of the spoils?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Put simply, the talks have been about ensuring the ICC is a well-managed, well-funded members’ organisation capable of protecting and enhancing the game now and into the future.

Discussions started more than a year ago as the ICC prepares to go to tender for its next commercial rights agreement.

It’s no secret that India wanted at least some sort of recognition of its considerable contribution to the value of ICC events (over 70%). But from our perspective, the last thing on our mind was money.

We weren’t asking for any more. We were asked to come up with an equitable solution to the issues that have plagued the ICC for years and that’s what we did.

And in order to solve the problem of binding all countries to participate in ICC events for an eight-year period, we came up with a formula that provided for an equitable result. At the end of the day, you have to look at what value a country brings to a particular tournament. That is, how much money they’ve brought in and how well they play.

That was a valid calculation in terms of the formula we came up with, which in the end was worked out at a portion being applied to how much a member’s market contributed to ICC commercial rights, a portion allocated to how well a member has done on the field, what value they bring to ICC events from a competitive aspect and two further calculations based on the period of membership in the ICC and how much each member has done to grow the game in its country.

That’s how the model was positioned – with no pre-determined outcomes - and in the end I think it worked out pretty well. Everybody gets rewarded for doing their best to contribute to the ICC, everyone is incentivised to not only do well in ICC events but, more importantly, grow the game of cricket in their home markets. Everyone gets more money under the new arrangement.

Of course, you can always say there were a thousand other things that should have been done and could have been done, but we’ve probably done 50 things that will be much better for the ICC and much better for world cricket.

You can only achieve so much each time and I think that’s how these proposals should be looked at.  We’ve established a new model of meritocracy and we’re making cricket better than ever.

The suggestion contained in the initial draft discussion that three teams couldn’t be relegated from the proposed top tier of a championship caused a lot of debate, was it eventually dropped because it flew in the face of any push to make world cricket more of a meritocracy?

Well that’s now been removed. It was in the draft discussion paper that was leaked and didn’t progress to the final discussion paper. If nothing else, the draft paper worked as an agenda to work things through, and it did initiate discussion. Indeed, that’s exactly what was intended; we needed to stimulate debate and change.  

It’s one of several items in that document that have gone - the idea of a permanent shared chairmanship has gone and we’ve also agreed to expand the committees by an additional person. Cricket Australia is very supportive of all of those changes and they also had the full support of India.

Doesn’t the fact that individual member nations will be expected to negotiate their own bilateral deals to lock in Test series spell the end of the Future Tours Program that was the cornerstone of truly global Test cricket?

No, in fact that’s one of the big positives of this proposal that seems to have been missed.

If you look at the broken model that we started with, the FTP as we came to know was pretty wobbly. As it was, plenty of countries have baulked at, challenged or have varied what was just a board resolution and recent events demonstrate the huge flaws in that system.  

So you couldn’t exactly say the existing FTP was a cornerstone of cricket. In fact, it couldn’t even guarantee a series would be played or how many games would be played in a series. But what we’re achieving with this change is a robust FTP – for an extended three-year period - and at the moment India and others are committing to tour everywhere. It’s true that it’s up to each member nation to negotiate with them but even Pakistan is being spoken to (by India) and that would represent a huge breakthrough. And these commitments, for the first time, will be contractual commitments between members rather than just a resolution of an ICC director.

The overall improvements to the game through a stronger FTP will be significant. A strong FTP represents the single most important factor for any cricket nation to generate revenue.

But can any of the member nations truly hope to negotiate a bilateral agreement from a position of strength, or are they so beholden to India’s financial power that they have no choice but to agree to whatever terms are imposed?

India has committed to negotiate in good faith with everybody  to try to put a workable FTP together. And as the media statement issued after the most recent ICC meeting states, the agreed proposals they voted for stipulate that they will be bankable, legally-binding contracts which means there’s no running away from them. And India has agreed to that. We all have.

But it should be recognised that over the years India has been generous with its touring commitments – Indian teams have basically travelled non-stop. Recently though, they’ve been trying to establish their own home international season and that has created some stresses in their FTP commitments.

How do you respond to criticism that these proposals seriously disenfranchise associate and affiliate nations

That’s simply not true.

Depending on how much the ICC gets from the sale of its commercial rights, they will get far more direct funding than ever before and the ICC will still fund all of their events. The sale process will determine how much affiliates and associates end up with. But if the ICC gets the same fees then they’ll get the same as they received in the last cycle and if it goes up – which you can sensibly assume will happen – then they get more, no question. Add to that the new rights to enter into the Test arena and you can see the proposals seriously benefit the associate and affiliate members.

But the bottom line is we have to grow the size of the pie and it’s true that if we do grow the pie then India takes an ever-increasing share to turn up because we have to accept that the bulk of the money’s coming out of India and the greater their contribution to ICC events, the greater the value of ICC rights. With the new model, if that changes in the future, so will the amount of money that goes to them.

Put simply, this proposal pays all members more money and still leaves plenty for the ICC to operate with and at the same time provides incentives to perform locally and internationally. It's a much better model than the one we’ve used in the past.

Additionally and most importantly associate countries will be able to move up the cricket playing ladder if they perform better. There is now no barrier to them playing Test cricket or top level one-day internationals. They simply have to get better at the game and they will move up the ladder. We have a performance-based system.

What about claims that it will effectively sound the death knell for Test cricket because it will only be viable for the big three nations?

That’s also as far from the truth as you can get it. The whole aim of this proposal has been to strengthen Test cricket, not harm it. In my view, this is the best impetus to Test cricket that you can get.

We’ve broken the glass ceiling by adding commercial and incentive pressures to ensure participating nations do better. They’ll need to play better cricket because of the competition model and if they don’t play better cricket then somebody else might come up and take their place in the Test rankings. And that result is fine because whoever makes it to the top rankings will have earned the right to be there. That simply doesn’t happen under the current structure.

The other thing we would establish under these proposals is a Test cricket fund that will be available to all nations except for Australia, England and India. It will encourage the other member nations by helping to offset their losses from playing Test cricket. Because the reality for all of them is that playing Test cricket costs them money. None of them make much money out of Test cricket except when they play India in which case they might make a small amount. But they all know they would make a lot more from playing ODIs against India.

So we’ve created a fund that is essentially $10 million per country over eight years to help subsidise their losses and encourage them to continue to play and succeed at Test cricket. And depending on how much money we get from the next set of commercial deals, that will determine how big that fund gets – but at this stage it’s envisaged to be over a million dollars per year, per country.

So if in your view the perception of what these proposals aim to deliver has been so misconstrued, from where has the misunderstanding arisen?

I’m not really sure. There’s been a few people who have jumped to the conclusion that the proposal was a power grab when the opposite was true.

All it represented was an offer from England, India and Australia to lead the organisation, giving recognition to the fact that it is a members’ organisation and also acknowledging that since Australia and England gave up the right of veto 20 years or so ago, no member nation has taken up a leadership role.

So what’s happened since then is that over time ICC executives have pretty much taken the organisation where they thought was a good place to go, which has been on an expansion path, recruiting as many nations as they could to the ICC and then saying it’s now a truly global game. But at the same time as that’s been happening, most of the full members are now in financial trouble and some people would argue that the standard of cricket has been deteriorating.

So what the working group that came up with these proposals for discussion was on about was how we could beef up the quality of cricket as well as grow its commercial strength, while sustaining the viability of ICC members. We thought the best way to achieve that was through greater competition, greater support where needed and through a meritocracy that says if you get better you go up, and if you don’t get better you go down.

But people have also missed the fact that the changes bring India inside the tent, committed to take a leadership role and incentivised to ensure that the ICC succeeds in every way, which is why at the meeting it was agreed that the representative of India would become chairman of the ICC Board for two years following the conference here in Melbourne in July. This is in recognition of the primary role they play and what they bring to the table in terms of leadership, ability and revenue.

What about suggestions that these proposed changes could have been implemented under the existing governance structure?

The proposed changes would not have occurred under the current governance structure. The model was broken and needed to change. And it will now, with everyone in the tent competing to make a better ICC and striving to make their domestic markets better and better.