International Cricket Council (ICC) vice-president Alan Isaac has played down the ‘Big Brother’ tag linked to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) because of its huge influence on world cricket and added that it is a very decent outfit to work with.
Isaac, who will become ICC president in 2012 after Sharad Pawar steps down, said: “In my experience, they (BCCI) are very decent to work with.” Commenting on cricket as it is played and watched in India by Indians, he says: “It’s really hard to explain. We think we’re a rugby-mad country but there it’s a religion.”
Referring to BCCI and its players’ reluctance to adopt and apply the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS) in full, Isaac agrees with the BCCI that the system still needs improvement and wants it to be absolutely full proof before it can be accepted.
“Around the DRS, for example, the media have tended to give (India) the blame as to why the DRS is not being implemented. But it’s not only them. I personally am not convinced the technology works well, so we’ve got to do something about that,” Isaac says.
“Often when (India) hold a view, they are right, but various parts of the media have a different view, whether you’re Geoff Boycott or whatever. So this perception has built up that A, [India] are hard to deal with and B, they control world cricket. But in fact they are good
to work with and on the DRS, I actually think they are right,” he added.
This Wellingtonian is embarking on something special and unique, and certainly one with a whole heap of responsibility attached to it. He is about to take hold of the wheel that controls a sport which is more like a religion in some countries and he will soon pull on the strings of a billion-dollar organisation in the form of the ICC.
Many of the ICC funding streams start from Indians’ obsession of the sport, Isaac says, but he stresses that the speculation that BCCI hold so much power they control the ICC is a long way off the mark.
