London: Lord Harry Woolf, the former judge whose review of the ICC's governance structure was rejected, has lambasted the proposed revamp of the body which would cede executive decision-making to India, Australia and England, calling the controversial plan a "retrograde step".
Lord Woolf, whose 2011 review of the ICC's governance structure was vehemently opposed by the BCCI, said the currently planned revamp is "a really alarming position for the future of cricket".
"It is giving extraordinary powers to a small triumvirate of three people, and everybody else has got no power to say anything or do anything," Woolf told 'The Daily Telegraph'.
"I would certainly think it would be very difficult to get any person who was completely objective, looking at cricket, to understand how these proposals could take forward the programme for international cricket," he added.
Woolf said the changes, if implemented, would make ICC a private club instead of being a world governing body.
"To say a sport that has got aspirations to be a world-class sport internationally should not have an independent body at the top seems to me to be very surprising. It seems to be entirely motivated by money," he opined.
"I think it will stand out as a retrograde step, and people will be worried for less powerful figures, or countries, in the cricketing world. It is elevating three members - and the assumption is made that if you get large earnings from cricket, they are yours and not cricket's, which is very false."
