International Cricket Council drags its feet on reforming the sport’s global structure

Earlier this year the World Cricketers’ Association (WCA) released the Global Game Structure Report, looking at the shortfalls of the game’s structures and suggesting solutions.

More than six months later, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has not so much as acknowledged the document.

In a report published in March 2025, based on interviews with 64 stakeholders including South Africa’s Aiden Markram and Laura Wolvaardt, along with Australia Test captain Pat Cummins and England’s former whiteball skipper Jos Buttler, the WCA demanded that the ICC be “modernised” to “ensure it is fit for purpose to lead the global game”, criticising its “lack of centralised global leadership”.

The WCA is the global players’ trade union, with South African Tony Irish serving as a director on its board.

The main objective for the WCA, from its report, is to have a regulated global calendar that includes an international window – outside of ICC tournaments – during which international cricket is prioritised. Its aim is to ensure that international cricket does not clash with any franchise cricket, so players don’t have to choose between playing for their national side or their franchise team – which has become a growing trend in global cricket.

The WCA has taken a leaf out of Fédération Internationale de Football Association’s (Fifa’s) handbook with its proposal, looking at how the soccer federation manages the sport with dedicated windows for international fixtures in between league fixtures. All soccer leagues globally come to a halt during these international windows.

Cricket’s ability to implement a similar international calendar with international windows is slightly more complicated. The ICC, unlike Fifa, is a members’ association and not a governing body.

“There’s a fundamental difference between being a genuine global governing body as opposed to a members’ association,” Irish explained to Daily Maverick.

“[With] a members’ association, each country comes there with [its own] country’s agenda, whereas a global governing body will actually make decisions for the best interest of the global game, that means for everyone.”

Several top international players have chosen to play in global franchise leagues instead of international cricket. A global, regulated calendar, like soccer has, would ensure that it wouldn’t have to be an either or situation.

BCCI control

It serves the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) – the most powerful ICC member – to not have a global calendar, however.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) – the premier T20 franchise tournament in the world – has carved out its own annual window in the cricket calendar, similar to an ICC event like a World Cup.

The inaugural IPL tournament, in 2008, ran for six weeks and had 59 matches with eight teams participating. This year’s tournament was a whole month longer, running for 10 weeks, with 10 teams competing across 74 matches.

“[The IPL window] doesn’t exist by any kind of regulation or anything like that, it just exists because the players get so well paid to play in the IPL that every country knows that their players will go and play in the IPL over that time,” Irish explained.

“If you don’t release your players to the IPL, of course you’re going to incur the wrath of the BCCI. There’s no formal window and that’s why the window keeps growing.

“If the [ICC] committed to an actual regulated window and said ‘you have six weeks or seven weeks’ or whatever it is, then the BCCI wouldn’t be able to keep growing that window.

“It’s going to keep growing because that’s where all the money is.”

The only way for the majority of cricket-playing countries to sustain themselves is through developing their own franchise leagues akin to the IPL.

Most have taken up investment from the IPL in some form or another, however. The SA20 in South Africa is practically the IPL’s baby sister, with all six teams being owned by owners of teams from the Indian tournament. Similarly with the International League T20 in the United Arab Emirates, Caribbean Premier League in the West Indies and Major League Cricket in America. Even England’s The Hundred franchise tournament has seen several teams being purchased by IPL owners, with renaming of teams expected next season.

“Generally, the way that the BCCI operates is that they don’t want to be regulated because they know they can control everything anyway,” Irish said. “They have the political and economic clout to do it.”

Structural reform

For any changes to be implemented, structural reform is required at the ICC. The ICC was practically overhauled by “the Big Three” – India, Australia and England – in 2014.

Since then, India’s influence on the global game has only grown.

In the last ICC finance model released in 2023, the BCCI was allocated 38.5% ($231-million) of the ICC’s revenue. Eleven other Test-playing nations shared the rest, with England receiving 6.89% ($41.33-million) and Australia 6.25% ($37.53-million). South Africa received a measly 4.37% ($26.24-million).

In practical, on-field terms, England, India and Australia play one another in bilateral cricket more than any other of the global sides – this came with changing the Future Tours Programme with the advent of the “Big Three”. They’re also the only Test-playing nations still able to afford to play five-match Test series, which they only play among and against one another.

India essentially runs the ICC in the current iteration of the federation, with former BCCI chairperson Jay Shah the current chairperson of the board of directors of the ICC. And it serves them to have the system continue as is.

But although the sport is growing exponentially in financial terms in India, it’s struggling to maintain itself everywhere else in the globe – outside of England and Australia (whose passionate mass of followers helps sustain it).

But those three countries playing against one another on a loop only makes for compelling viewing for so long, before it becomes tedious. If the ICC continues to ignore the pleas from players who speak through the WCA, that tediousness will be what international cricket ends up being – with franchise cricket sprinkled in between. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.