Melbourne: Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Jay Shah was elected as Finance and Commercial Affairs (F&CA) committee head of the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Saturday, PTI reported.
Shah will lead the heading of ICC's most important committee. The F&CA committee takes ICC's major financial policy decisions before the ICC board ratifies them.
It includes the revenue sharing among the member nations and also the various major sponsorship deals that the global body inks throughout the year.
"Each and every member accepted Jay as the head of the F&CA committee. This is an equally powerful sub-committee apart from the ICC chair (Greg Barclay)," an ICC source told PTI on conditions of anonymity.
The F&CA committee is always headed by an ICC Board member, and Shah's election makes it clear that he will represent the BCCI on the ICC Board. The position used to be India's during the N Srinivasan era, but during Shashank Manohar's tenure as ICC chairman, the BCCI's power and might had significantly reduced.
In fact, during the Committee of Administrators' tenure, there was a point when BCCI didn't even have any representation in the F&CA committee.
Former BCCI president Sourav Ganguly was a member of the F&CA committee till last year.
"India is a commercial hub of global cricket with more than 70 per cent sponsorship coming from the region. It is imperative that an ICC F&CA should always be headed by BCCI," the ICC source said.