ICC elections: Did the BCCI help Laxman Sivaramakrishan beat Tim May?

Laxman Sivaramakrishnan has replaced Tim May as one of two Current Player representatives on the ICC’s Cricket Committee, the ICC has said. The other Current Player representative is former Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara, who has been on the committee since 2007.

Sangakkara and Sivaramakrishnan were recently elected in a vote by the 10 Test captains and will serve on the Cricket Committee for a three-year term from 2013-15.

However, the election was shrouded in some controversy, with allegations that some boards were lobbied or pressured to change the votes of their captains. The ICC board had proposed three names - Sangakkara, May and Sivaramakrishnan - for the two players’ representative positions.

Sivaramakrishnan was obviously backed by the BCCI, and according to ESPNcricinfo , “had contacted at least one other member country ‘requesting’ support.”

According to Tony Irish, the chief executive of the South Africa players association, the BCCI had actually gone so far as to arrange for a re-vote after it discovered that most of the captains had voted for May.

“The voting for the players’ representative on the ICC cricket committee is done by the 10 Test captains,” Irish told The Indian Express .“In the first instance, it went in favour of Tim May. But, suddenly we faced a situation where Tim May was said to be ‘unacceptable’ by some board and a re-voting was ordered. Some captains were pressured to change their decision and we all know that Tim is not liked by the Indian board. I don’t want to go into the details. But us and some of the countries’ boards wondered what was the reason for the change,” Irish added.

According to ESPNcricinfo , one of the factor’s that contrbuted to May’s defeat was his criticism “of the running of Twenty20 tournaments including the IPL, Sri Lankan Premier League and the Bangladesh Premier League”. May is the chief executive of FICA, and it is in this capacity that he has been outspoken about payment problems in all of these leagues.

The Cricket Committee’s annual meeting will take place in London on 28 and 29 May, the ICC has said. “The Cricket Committee’s remit is to discuss cricket-playing matters and to make recommendations to the ICC Chief Executives’ Committee and the ICC Board that will meet at Lord’s during the ICC’s annual conference week from June 25-29.

The Cricket Committee meeting will be chaired by Anil Kumble, the former Indian captain. The committee is made up of the following members:

Alan Isaac, the ICC President, and David Richardson, the ICC Chief Executive (Ex-Officio), Mark Taylor and Andrew Strauss (Past Player representatives), Kumar Sangakkara and Laxman Sivaramakrishnan (Current Player representatives), Gary Kirsten (Full Member team coach representative), Clare Connor (Women’s Cricket representative), David White (Member Board representative), Trent Johnston ( Associate representative), Ravi Shastri (Media representative), Steve Davis (Umpires’ representative), Ranjan Madugalle (Referees’ representative), John Stephenson (MCC representative), and David Kendix (Statistician representative).