The Indian Cricket Board's hegemony in world cricket on Wednesday came under severe threat as the richest board was comprehensively out-voted on governance structure and revenue model at the ICC Board Meeting in Dubai.
India was checkmated by former BCCI boss Shashank Manohar, who now helms the ICC as its first independent Chairman.
The BCCI was thrashed 1-9 when representatives of all other member nations, except India's Amitabh Chaudhary, voted in favour of a change in the financial structure. Their opposition to change of the governance structure was also rejected 2-8 by the ICC board with Chaudhary only finding support from Sri lanka Cricket's Thilanga Sumathipala.
The BCCI were opposing changes on two counts — ICC's Governance model, which required a change in its constitution with review of full membership, and a two-tier Test structure.
The bigger issue was the contentious revenue model, which is set to bring India's share down to half from $570 million. Manohar has advocated a more equitable distribution from the earlier 'Big Three' Model where India, Australia and England were the primary earners. "Yes, the voting is over. It was 8-2 in favour of revamped revenue model and 9-1 in favour of constitutional changes," a BCCI functionary present in Dubai told PTI.
"The BCCI has voted against both as we had, in principle, maintained that all these changes are completely unacceptable for us. At this point, we can only say that all options are open for us. We would have to go back to our SGM and apprise the members of the situation," he added
It was learnt that since BCCI outrightly rejected the additional $100 million pay-out in revenue, it was once again given the original option of $290 million which is a $280 million cut from the $570 million India had been getting till last year.