Lorgat frozen out of ICC meeting

Cricket South Africa chief executive Haroon Lorgat has been frozen out of ICC business and it comes at a convenient time for those trying to take over the game.

Cricket South Africa chief executive Haroon Lorgat has been frozen out of ICC business and it comes at a convenient time for those trying to take over the game.

Published Jan 25, 2014

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Johannesburg – Haroon Lorgat will be in Dubai at the same time as next week’s much-anticipated and crucial International Cricket Council (ICC) meetings over the future of the sport’s administration, but cannot play any part in deliberations owing to restrictions placed on him by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

Instead of their chief executive, Cricket South Africa will be represented by chief financial officer Naasei Appiah, while CSA president Chris Nenzani was expected to leave on Saturday ahead of the two-day meeting of the ICC Board starting on Tuesday.

Lorgat is understood to be engaged in meetings until Thursday while in Dubai, though the nature of those talks (or who they’re with) is not clear.

Under the terms of an agreement reached last year with the BCCI to ensure that India toured South Africa, Lorgat is not supposed to engage in any meetings of the ICC’s Chief Executive Committee, pending the outcome of an inquiry into his conduct.

That inquiry relates to Lorgat’s role in a letter made public by the ICC’s former legal advisor, David Becker, three months ago in which he outlines the weakness of the ICC’s administration while also pointing out the danger of the BCCI’s dominance in the game.

Though the agreement concerning Lorgat’s withdrawal from ICC matters was reached in October, it is understood that the inquiry will only comence sometime in the next fortnight.

The meetings taking place in Dubai are critical to the future administrative structure of the ICC in light of proposals made by the sport’s three wealthiest boards – the England and Wales Cricket Board, Cricket Australia and the BCCI.

Those proposals, contained in a “draft document” that was suddenly handed to the ICC’s full members at a meeting on the ninth of this month, includes the drawing up of a new two-tier competition for Tests (in which India, Australia and England are exempted from relegation), a new funding model for the redistribution of ICC revenue – with the BCCI slated to gain the largest piece of that revenue pie – a new leadership committee to contain senior representatives of all three boards on a permanent basis, and for the abolishment of the Future Tours Programme.

Cricket SA remain the only full member to have publicly called for the proposals to be withdrawn, describing them as “fundamentally flawed”, and being “in breach of the ICC Constitution”.

The only modicum of support for CSA’s stance has come from the Federation of International Cricketers’ Association, whose head, Paul Marsh, described certain elements contained in the proposals as “disturbing”.

On Thursday, the BCCI, following a meeting of their working committee in Chennai, unsurprisingly came out in support of the proposals and even went as far as to authorise their office bearers to “enter into agreements with the ICC for participating in the ICC events and host ICC events, subject to the proposals being approved in the ICC Board”.

Saturday Star

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