Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Shaharyar Khan, on Monday (February 13) revealed that the PCB has suffered a whopping loss of USD 200 million because of the Indian team’ reluctance to play bilateral series against their arch-rivals.
India has not played a full bilateral series with Pakistan since the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. Pakistan did tour India in the winter of 2012/13 for a short tour consisting of three ODIs but apart from that, the bitter rivals have only met in ICC tournaments.
“I informed the BCCI representative at the International Cricket Council (ICC) meeting recently that PCB had incurred losses of around USD 200 million because of India’s refusal to play us and these losses were mounting as the BCCI was not even honouring a legal agreement to play bilateral series between 2015 and 2023,” Shaharyar Khan told reporters in Lahore.
The PCB have already made up their mind on taking legal actions against their Indian counterpart and Khan said that the board is only waiting for the confirmation of the new draft constitution of the ICC to start their legal process.
“The new draft constitution has a clause for a disputes resolution committee and once the constitution is final we intend to take our case against the BCCI first to this committee,” he said.
Khan further said that the BCCI officials had told him in the ICC meeting that the BCCI was willing to play with Pakistan but could not do this without getting the green light from the government. Khan also revealed that the BCCI official cited the government’s intervention behind their failure to honour the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)
The cricket boards, in 2014, had signed MoUs for six bilateral series to be played between 2015 and 2023. However, the MoU has not been implemented due to escalating political tensions between the two neighbours
“I told him that they should have thought about their government before signing the MoU which is a legal agreement as per our lawyers,” he said.
“I told him that India had denied us two home series the losses of which were around USD 200 million,” Khan added.
Khan also said that India would still earn the biggest share from ICC earnings even after the termination of the ‘Big Three’ system and introuduction of new financial model.
“Even under the new draft constitution India gets around 16 percent share of all ICC earnings which is higher compared to other boards. Under the Big Three formula India, Australia and England were taking home more than 50 percent of the revenues with other boards getting far less,” Khan said.
“It was not an equitable system of revenue distribution and we only agreed to it because India agreed to sign the MoU and play six bilateral series with us which would have allowed us to get financially stronger,” he added.