MUMBAI: India’s battle against the ICC turned nasty on Thursday with the world governing body of the game accused of snooty, avaricious neo-colonialism.
“The avaricious and snooty officials are behaving more as masters and less as paid executives,” raged Lalit Modi, vice-president of the BCCI.
Modi charged that the “weird logistics” of the ICC during the ongoing Champions Trophy in Indiawas the root cause of the trouble. “Everything including accreditation and security is being handled by companies based in London or South Africa who have no clue about ground realities here,” Modi wrote in The Times of India.
“The one good thing is that the world media has seen the real face of the neo-colonialists of international cricket. These people are bent upon setting up their empire by parachuting some mercenaries who are acting like agents of new imperialism in India,” he added.
Behind the flare-up lies big money and India’s refusal to sign a key commercial contract with the ICC despite threats it could lose the right to stage the 2011 cricket World Cup as a result.
“Let me also make it clear that India was voted to host the 2011 World Cup by the member-nations and not by any individual. So nobody should threaten anyone of taking away something that has been decided by an overwhelming majority of the ICC members,” Modi warned. “It’s time we had a chief executive who comes from Afro Asia, someone who understands the problems of a majority of ICC members and doesn’t heed just the affluent alone,” he added.
The world governing body last week said all nations had to sign the Members Participation Agreement (MPA) binding them to all ICC events until 2015. The BCCI wants certain MPA clauses amended, noting the contract would badly hit its own commercial deals worth a reported one billion dollars over the next four years.
India won the right to hold the 2011 World Cup jointly with South Asian neighbours Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Five of the ICC’s six main sponsors are Indian firms or the Indian branches of international businesses which target the enormous market on the sub-continent where cricket totally dominates all sports.
Source: http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=28124"]](http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=28116/SIZE)
:halo: 