Opinion Column | Rohini Chatterjee, Chief Cricket Columnist
The Board Everyone Loves to Criticise
In the polite company of cricket's administrative world — in the Long Rooms and committee rooms of Lord's, the MCG, and Newlands — the BCCI is discussed with a particular mixture of resentment and awe. They are too powerful. Too commercial. Too willing to leverage India's market dominance to extract advantages from the ICC governance structure that no other board could justify.
All of that is substantially true. The BCCI is all of those things. It is also the reason that professional cricketers around the world earn more money than they have at any point in the sport's history. It is the reason that the ICC has resources to develop cricket in Associate nations that could not otherwise sustain the game. It is the reason that the IPL exists — and the IPL is, whatever its critics say, the greatest cricket product ever made.
I want to make the uncomfortable argument: the BCCI created a monster, and cricket is better for it.
The Commercial Revolution and Its Discontents
Begin with what the BCCI actually did. Starting in the early 2000s, India's cricket board made a strategic decision to commercialise the sport aggressively, leveraging the size of the Indian market to extract broadcast deals, sponsorship revenues, and governance influence that exceeded anything other cricket boards could match.
The ICC's revenue distribution model shifted accordingly. By the late 2010s, BCCI's share of ICC revenue distributions had grown to reflect India's contribution to the commercial base of the sport. This was not popular with other boards. It was presented, with some justification, as the BCCI using market power to rewrite the rules of cricket governance in its own interest.
What the critics rarely acknowledge is what this commercial power produced. The IPL, launched in 2008 with a franchise auction that raised ₹4,169 crore, created a self-sustaining commercial ecosystem that currently generates broadcast revenues in excess of ₹48,000 crore per cycle. Those revenues fund Indian cricket at every level — and, through ICC distributions, fund cricket development in fifty-three other countries.
The Player Welfare Argument
Before the IPL, the financial reality of professional cricket was this: a small number of elite international players from wealthy boards earned comfortable incomes. The vast majority of professional cricketers — domestic players, lower-ranked internationals, players from smaller boards — earned incomes that would not have been considered professional in any comparable sport.
The IPL changed this calculation. It created a market for T20 skill that produced price discovery for talent that had previously been chronically undervalued. A West Indian fast bowler who could skid the ball in at 148 km/h was worth ₹5 crore in 2010. A Sri Lankan leg-spinner with a sharp googly was worth ₹3 crore. These valuations — generated by competitive market dynamics in the auction — gave players from non-Indian boards negotiating leverage with their own boards that they had never possessed before.
The consequence, over fifteen years, has been a systematic upward revision of player contracts across the global game. South African domestic contracts improved. Australian state contracts improved. The Caribbean Premier League created income for West Indian players that allowed some of them to remain professional cricketers who would otherwise have retired early due to financial necessity. None of this would have happened without the reference point that IPL valuations established.
The Governance Problem, Honestly Assessed
The criticisms of BCCI governance are not confected. The board's relationship with the ICC has at various points been characterised by a willingness to threaten the withdrawal of Indian participation from ICC events as leverage in commercial negotiations. This is a form of institutional hostage-taking that damages the collaborative governance model cricket requires.
The FTP (Future Tours Programme) has been distorted by India's commercial priorities. Tours are scheduled around BCCI preferences in ways that impose costs on other boards in terms of planning certainty. The ICC World Test Championship — a sincere attempt to give the five-day game a competitive structure — has been partially undermined by scheduling conflicts that BCCI has sometimes been slow to resolve.
These criticisms stand. The BCCI has used its power in ways that prioritise Indian interests over the global game's structural health. That is a real cost that serious cricket governance requires acknowledging.
But here is the honest assessment: every major sporting federation behaves this way at the point where one market becomes disproportionately dominant. The NFL's relationship with the broader global sports calendar. FIFA's governance of World Cup scheduling and broadcast rights. Premier League clubs' influence over the FIFA international window. The BCCI's behaviour is not exceptional in the context of commercial sport — it is the predictable expression of market power.
What the Monster Built
Despite its governance flaws, what the BCCI's commercial dominance has produced is a cricket ecosystem that is more financially robust, more globally distributed in its talent base, and more commercially viable than at any previous point in the sport's history.
A player from Harare can realistically aspire to an IPL contract. A spinner from Lahore shapes the training regimens of every T20 franchise in the world. A twenty-year-old fast bowler from Durban can earn more in eight weeks of IPL cricket than in a full year of domestic cricket at home.
The quality of T20 cricket — the technical sophistication of batting, the variety of bowling skills deployed, the athleticism in the field — has improved dramatically in the IPL era. That improvement is directly attributable to the financial incentives the IPL created and the competitive talent market those incentives generated.
Is the BCCI a monster? By some definitions, yes. It is large, commercially aggressive, self-interested, and more powerful than the governance structures around it can fully contain. But the monster it created — this vast, noisy, expensive, brilliant competition that runs for eight weeks every year and genuinely changes cricketers' lives — has made the sport better in ways that its critics, who prefer to focus on governance shortcomings, consistently underestimate.
Cricket needed a monster. The BCCI obliged. And here we are, watching the greatest cricket product ever made, arguing about whether it is good for the game.
It is.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How does the BCCI's revenue compare to other cricket boards?
The BCCI generates significantly more revenue than any other cricket board in the world. IPL media rights alone are worth tens of thousands of crore rupees per cycle, placing BCCI in a different financial category from even the second-largest boards (Cricket Australia, England and Wales Cricket Board).
Q: Does the BCCI share IPL revenue with other cricket boards?
Directly, no. IPL revenue belongs to BCCI and the franchise owners. Indirectly, yes — BCCI's ICC distributions, which are partly funded by its commercial success, go to all Full Member boards. Player earnings from the IPL benefit individuals from all cricketing nations.
Q: What criticisms have other cricket boards made about BCCI's governance?
Common criticisms include BCCI's disproportionate influence over ICC governance, its perceived willingness to use India's market power in commercial negotiations, scheduling conflicts between IPL and international cricket windows, and the revenue distribution model within the ICC.
Q: How has the IPL affected cricket development in non-Indian countries?
The IPL has created income streams for cricketers from all cricketing nations. This financial pressure has indirectly improved domestic contracts in several countries and created reference points for talent valuation that have benefited players at all levels of the game.
Q: What reforms have been proposed to balance BCCI's power within cricket governance?
Proposed reforms include a more equitable ICC revenue distribution model, protected international cricket windows that override franchise league scheduling, and clearer governance rules around conflicts of interest in ICC decision-making. Implementation has been gradual and contested.