Can anyone stop international cricket's surrender to the paymasters?

In India a One-Day tournament is underway the only possible justification for which is that it makes money for some of the participants and promotes the brands of the corporate sponsors who support it. The 'ICC Champions Trophy' will get good viewing figures in the Indian sub-continent (One-Day cricket always does) - at least for matches in which India and Pakistan take part.

But in purely cricketing terms the tournament is an irrelevance. The Cricket World Cup is only six months away - and that is the tournament that really reveals which is the best One-Day side in the world. So why do we need the Champions Trophy? We don't.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) lacks events

The ICC is nominally the body that oversees world cricket, but the reality is that the power resides elsewhere. The ICC has only three 'properties' - the 'Cricket World Cup', the 'Champions Trophy' and the sponsorship of the umpires' shirts.

Test matches and One-Day Internationals are nominally played under the auspices of the ICC, but the world body gets little or no income from them. So the ICC's ambitious plans to build a cricket academy in Dubai and to promote cricket around the world requires the 'Champions Trophy' to provide some cash.

That cash comes from sponsors and that is why the ICC commercial team hawks their few properties so aggressively every few years. They sold the umpires' shirts to 'Emirates' last time around - but whether the airline will consider this to have been value for money compared with all their other promotional options must be questionable. The other world cricket sponsors that the ICC panders to (brands like Pepsi, LG, Hutch and Hero Honda) will also be concerned to use their sponsorship funds as wisely as possible.

Indian market is the big prize for cricket sponsors

Simply stated you do not sponsor cricket with substantial funds unless you have brands to promote in India. That is why Pepsi and LG and the others have supported the ICC in the past - because they want to promote their brands amongst the huge and wealthy Indian middle class. But the recent arrangement made between the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Nike - one of the largest sports sponsorship deals ever - had nothing to do with the ICC and provides the world body with no income.

Indian cricket and Indian players will get rich courtesy of Nike, but the ICC sees none of this action. How long before Pepsi and LG see that their funds could better be spent on a long term arrangements with the BCCI, rather than in just funding the two events (World Cup and Champions Trophy) that the ICC has on offer?

ICC looks after their own

When the ICC moved their offices to Dubai a year or so ago their justification was that they would be nearer the centres of power (in the sub-continent) than they would have been if they had stayed at Lord's - the traditional home of cricket. They also argued that they could oversee their academy (which is under construction in the emirate) and that there would also be tax advantages from the move.

As the ICC already had tax-exempt status for its commercial activities (from their then Monaco home) the only real tax benefits from the relocation of twenty or more staff to Dubai came to these staff rather than to world cricket. No doubt Malcolm Speed and the other well-paid officers of the ICC enjoy their tax-free incomes - but how much longer will the ICC continue to enjoy the substantial sponsor support that makes these salaries affordable?

The real brand benefits come from One-day Internationals

Nike and other brands who support Indian cricket do so because they know that in future during any one year India will play perhaps as many as thirty One-day Internationals. These will get high television viewership figures and the commercial benefits will be enormous.

For the BCCI these matches (which are arranged bilaterally between India and the other cricket nations) are far more important than the ICC events. That is why the Indian board was pretty unenthusiastic about this year's Champions Trophy (despite being hosts) and why they are similarly unexcited by the ICC's new baby - a Twenty20 world cup.

The Indian Board and the ICC are at loggerheads

The BCCI is currently refusing to sign the 'Members Participation Agreement' (MPA), which governs marketing and other aspects of all ICC events from 2007 to 2015. Lalit Modi, the vice-president of the BCCI, has accused said the ICC of 'bullying the Indian board' and has said that India would pull out of all future ICC events if the MPA was not suitably amended.

There will only one winner in this unseemly struggle - and it isn't the ICC! The BCCI knows that world cricket (and especially the sponsorship of world cricket) needs India. And quite how world cricket will change as a result of this permanent shift of power may be outside of even the ICC's power to influence.