ICC annual meeting – ICC mulls setting aside slice of ACB revenue to fund Afghanistan women players

July 20, 2024

in Cricket

Reading Time: 3 mins read

The prospect of ring-fencing cash for Afghanistan ladies’s cricket could possibly be raised on the ICC’s annual conferences in Colombo this weekend, as the worldwide physique comes below rising stress to behave over the Afghanistan Cricket Board’s (ACB) lack of ability to area a ladies’s group.

Numerous boards, amongst them Cricket Australia (CA) and New Zealand Cricket (NZC), are believed to be keen to debate prospects of such a transfer on the ICC Board assembly on Sunday. The suggestion entails retaining apart a share of the annual income that’s distributed to Afghanistan by the ICC as a Full Member, for use – or saved – particularly in the direction of Afghanistan ladies’s cricket.

The dialogue on what to do with Afghanistan – the one Full Member and not using a ladies’s group, which is a key criterion of that membership – has gained urgency after a gaggle of Afghanistan ladies’s cricketers contracted by the ACB earlier than the Taliban takeover, wrote to the ICC chair Greg Barclay asking for assist in organising a refugee group for them in Australia, the place lots of them fled.

The letter was despatched within the aftermath of the Afghanistan males’s group reaching its first-ever world semi-final on the T20 World Cup 2024, and acknowledged the lads’s achievements in addition to the truth that the ACB can not recognise a ladies’s group due to the Taliban’s restrictive insurance policies. For the reason that Taliban’s return to energy in August 2021, ladies’s rights within the nation have been hit particularly laborious, with secondary training and work, in addition to sporting exercise, denied to them.

The 17 ladies cricketers have requested the ICC to recognise them as a refugee group administered by the East Asian Cricket workplace primarily based at Cricket Australia.

Cricket Australia has refused to play bilateral cricket with Afghanistan, withdrawing from three sequence, although they proceed to satisfy them at ICC occasions. They may proceed with that coverage within the speedy future. They’re the one Full Member to border such a coverage, and act on it – no different Full Member has refused to play bilateral matches in opposition to Afghanistan.

Any such dialogue within the ICC’s boardrooms will include complexities, nevertheless, given that there’s little precedent for such a scenario. The ICC’s annual income distribution to members doesn’t specify how a lot cash they need to spend on ladies’s cricket, so figuring out an applicable share to put aside could be a problem.

The ACB receives roughly USD 17 million yearly from the ICC as a part of the income distribution mannequin. It could possibly be advised that an escrow account is about up the place the cash is stored.

However who the cash is directed in the direction of might be one other query. Although the 17 ladies who wrote in to the ICC are believed to be gamers contracted by the ACB in November 2020, the ICC haven’t formally recognised them as such. And they’re unable to supply them official standing, as a result of as a member organisation, the ICC depends on particular person boards to compile and recognise groups.

In any case, these are all questions for after such a proposal has been agreed upon. That this may occur is under no circumstances a given, as not all boards view the difficulty in the identical method. There are, for instance, board administrators who take a extra sympathetic view in the direction of the shortcoming of the ACB to behave in opposition to the Taliban authorities that runs the nation.

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