Shashank Manohar is the first independent chairman of the ICC. To be eligible, he could not be an office-bearer of any national cricket federation, which is why he abandoned BCCI which he had been brought back to head and help clean up the mess left by one of his successors, Mr N. Srinivasan, whose hubris and unbridled use of authority led to a confrontation with the Supreme Court in which the board is set to come a cropper.
Far from settling to the task of reforming the BCCI, resurrecting its image and restructuring the board with the concurrence of the Lodha Committee and the top court, Mr Manohar seems to have used the top office to promote himself to head the international body. While vaulting personal ambition cannot be faulted, the cold-blooded manner in which Mr Manohar seems to have manipulated the ICC points to his ascent there at the cost of the BCCI and the nation.
The equal distribution of ICC revenues is a just principle against which the brazen Big Three operation militated. Had Mr Manohar pursued equity as a battle for natural justice and still remained to head the BCCI and turn around its image after the IPL betting and fixing scandals, he would have been hailed as the knight on a white charger.
What he has now done is to give away Rs 3,400 crore of additional revenue share that India’s 22 per cent would have made it eligible for over the next eight years in order to win over the constituents of ICC and earned sufficient popularity to be the sole nominee for chairman. In this game of “Shashank Redemption”, Manohar won, India and BCCI lost.
