Published: Jul 23, 2019, 01:22 PM (IST)
Edited: Jul 23, 2019, 01:22 PM (IST)
The association of Anil Kumble with the Euro T20 Slam has caught the ICC by surprise. Kumble, a former India legspinner, who also happens to be the chairman of the ICC’s technical committee, had signed up for an “advisory” role with the tournament, organised by Cricket Ireland, Cricket Scotland and Koninklijke Nederlandse, the Netherlands Cricket Board.
However, as per the Times of India, the ICC had no clue about the signing despite the board having its own events monitoring group, designed specifically to keep an eye on unstructured T20 leagues across the world. READ: Kumble hopes more Indian players play in global T20 leagues like Yuvraj
“He [Kumble] may have followed the necessary protocols for all you know. But the thing is, the events monitoring group could’ve certainly benefitted from the intelligence. They didn’t have an idea,” the daily reported quoting sources in the know of things. READ: Yuvraj Singh set to play in GT20 Canada for Toronto Nationals
Besides ICC, even the BCCI was not aware of any such developments. In fact, the board had no idea about the Euro T20 Slam, let alone Kumble’s signing. The tournament was unveiled last Friday and Kumble had hoped that “the BCCI would give NOCs to more Indian players” to play in T20 leagues across the world.
But the ICC seems to be operating on a different note altogether. The ICC does not encourage the growth of too many T20 leagues that have no proper structure or monitoring. The idea behind the formation of the entire events monitoring group was to keep an eye on these unregulated T20 leagues. From sponsoring to TV rights to players auctions – everything is being taken into consideration.
“Honestly, if something is not done about it, this could turn out to be pandemic in multiple ways. Nobody who is in charge of running these so-called systems in place has an idea of who is behind the inception of these properties,” a senior ICC executive said.
“And it all boils down to two questions that nobody has answers. First, who is putting money into these leagues? Second, who is earning from these leagues? There’s no answer to both these questions and that’s what is dangerous.”
