Cricket Australia, BCCI and ECB will probably embrace being called a bully. The bosses of the three organizations have taken a personal lead in pushing these proposals. One BCCI official sees this latest move as "formalizing dadagiri" according to Sharda Ugra. While her article is full of interesting insights, her central argument misses the point in my view.
Australia, England and India - "The Big Three"
South Africa, Zimbabwe, West Indies, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and New Zealand - "The Small Seven"
It is not a matter of bullying, or standing up to bullies. It is a matter of interests. The money is merely an instrument for furthering those interests. Here is the calculation that the three Boards have made in my view. I put it to you that these are the central facts of the matter. This is the game the Big Three are playing.
1. CA, BCCI and ECB generate a lot of income from selling rights to the series that they host in Australia, India and England respectively. SA, SL, NZ, WI, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh make far less. They probably have far more difficulty securing large multi-year deals from broadcasters in the way that CA, BCCI and ECB do.
2. The other major source of revenue cricket is the revenue generated by the ICC. The ICC does this by selling rights to broadcasters for multi-lateral tournaments like the World Cups, the Champions Trophy and the Champions League T20. The World Test Championship was to be yet another tournament which helped generate revenue for ICC.
3. At issue in the position paper is the revenue generated in (2).
4. The Small Seven depend far more on the revenue they get from (2) than they do on revenue they get from (1). Because they are small countries (or poor countries, or in some cases both), they simply cannot generate revenue of an order of magnitude comparable to the Big Three.
5. The proposal has two consequences:
(a) It drastically reduces the share of revenue received by the small seven under (2).
(b) It gets rid of the future tours program (FTP) which governs the calendars of all the full members.
6. The most lucrative cricket played by the Big Three is T20 cricket. It is also the area which has the greatest potential for growth, simply because it is relatively easy to gin up 6 more T20 franchises, while it is hard to develop a Test team.
7. The roadblock to the development of T20 cricket is the calendar which is currently governed by the Future Tours Program.
8. By now, the logic must be clear to you. Not only do the Big Three wish to give themselves the space (calendrically) to grow their lucrative franchises, they wish to enhance the share of the calendar given over to T20 cricket.
Reducing the Small Seven's share of the calendar by making it harder for them to play Tests is the most efficient way to clear up the calendar for lucrative T20 leagues. The real interest of the Big Three lies not in the money made by the ICC, but in the money to be made domestically. CA and ECB are not trying to tame the BCCI, they have decided to join them in letter and spirit.
It is a breathtaking conflict of interest that at least three individuals (Srinivasan, Kino and Raman) involved in drafting the paper stand to gain personally from demise of the future tours program.
The Big Three don't want to take over world cricket. They would like world cricket to get out of the way so they can make a lot of money. The IPL started in response to the ICL - because the BCCI thought there was a danger to world cricket and Indian cricket from competitor leagues like ICL which operated beyond the control of the traditional governing bodies. We have come a full circle since then.
CA, BCCI and ECB are the ICL of 2014.