No evidence of pressure from boards in Cricket Committee election: ICC

The ICC has said it has no evidence that pressure was brought to bear on any of the captains to change their vote in the ICC Cricket Committee elections. The cricket body issued a statement in response to media reports that the BCCI allegedly influenced the contest between Laxman Sivaramakrishnan and Tim May that resulted in May losing the election. The ICC confirmed that there was a re-vote but said it was because there was confusion about the process, including “in respect of what should happen in the case of a tied vote and, where teams had different captains for different formats of the game, which captain should be entitled to vote”. It was because of these issues that the ICC board decided it was necessary to hold the vote again. [caption id=“attachment_768229” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The ICC has said it has no evidence the Cricket Committee elections were not fair. Reuters[/caption] It also confirmed that it has received a written request from the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations (FICA) to hold an ethics investigation and it is considering the request. However, at this point it “has seen no evidence that supports allegations now being made that captains were put under pressure by their Member Boards to vote for a particular individual”. The controversy has to do with Laxman Sivaramakrishnan replacing Tim May as one of two Current Player representatives on the ICC’s Cricket Committee. 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 by the BCCI. The ICC board had proposed three names – Sangakkara, May and Sivaramakrishnan – for the two players’ representative positions. 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.