Dubai, Feb 1 (IANS) The International Cricket Council (ICC) Board Wednesday passed a unanimous resolution that the presidency will become an ‘ambassadorial’ role on a one-year rotational basis from 2014 while a chairman would lead the Board.
In a statement after the two-day meeting, the board said its recommendation regarding the presidency was ‘consistent with recommendations in the Woolf Report’.
The necessary amendments to the Articles of Association will be discussed at the next ICC Board meeting before being submitted for approval by the ICC Annual Conference in June.
The Board will also consider the position and role, if any, of the ICC Vice President between 2012 and 2014. Accordingly, the nomination received of Mustafa Kamal, the Bangladesh Cricket Board president, for the ICC Vice-Presidency from 2012-14 will be considered as part of this process.
India’s Sharad Pawar is the ICC president and after the end of his tenure in June 2012, he would be succeeded by Alan Isaac, the ICC vice-president nominated by New Zealand and Australia.
The recommendations, if approved, could strike out the role of president-elect (vice-president) and shatter Kamal’s ambitions to head the ICC.
The ICC Board also received from Lord Woolf of Barnes and PricewaterhouseCoopers a 60-page report containing 65 recommendations and a transitional plan. Woolf, a former chief justice of England and Wales, was appointed chairman of the ICC’s Independent Governance Review Committee and submitted a report containing 65 recommendations and a transitional plan.
‘This has to be the most important exercise that the ICC Board will take responsibility for in seeking to grow the game for future generations,’ ICC chief executive, Haroon Lorgat said in a statement.
The document will be published Thursday, with the ICC board due to review the report and discuss it before fully considering the recommendations at the next Board meeting in April 2012.
The board also approved a proposal to substantially increase incentives, in the form of prize money, to promote Test cricket in the period before the ICC Test Championship, scheduled for 2017.
From 2013 the top team in the ICC Test rankings will receive a minimum of $450,000, a substantial jump from the present $175,000. From 2015, the prize will be increased to $500,000 in 2015 and from 2016 there will be a further increase in Test prize money.
