THE TWISTS AND TURNS OF A SPORTING SOAP

They say the bad weather will last all week. Best, then, to stay in and settle down with some enthralling stories about everyone’s favourite subject: sports administration. Giles Clarke, erstwhile chairman of the ECB, wannabe chairman of the ICC, has been known to tell journalists not to bother with the business of cricket. In the documentary Death of a Gentleman he tells the two filmmakers Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber: “People are not interested in cricket administration, and why should they be?” The man has a point. No one ever fell in love with cricket because they loved reading about its various committees. Done right, cricket administration should be the dull and worthy work of unobtrusively efficient men and women. A necessary part of the sport, but, like the intricacies of Duckworth-Lewis calculations and an understanding of the respective merits of different varieties of grass, not one that need overly interest the average fan. Done wrong, however …

For the last decade or so – ever since, oddly enough, it became clear that there was oodles of money to be made in T20 – cricket has been the backdrop for a fantastically entertaining soap opera. A little less brutal than The Sopranos, a little more convoluted than The Wire, a lot more ludicrous than Empire, I’d strongly recommend it as Your Next Box Set, if you happen to have recently finished Netflix’s excellent Making a Murderer. At the heart of it is the interminable conflict between two Texan Oil Families, the Ewings and the Barneses rival factions in the upper echelons of the BCCI and their assorted allies around the world as they fight for the right to control the global game. The series has stretched on so long that the plot is too labyrinthine to recount in any great detail. But – SPOILER ALERT! – here is a brief recap of some of the key characters, their best and most surprising moments from the show’s last 10 years.

Early series charted the rise of the slick young businessman Lalit Modi, mastermind of the new Indian Premier League, his alliance with the scandal-prone Indian politician Sharad Pawar, and the downfall of their rival, BCCI grandee Jagmohan Dalmiya. “A worthy opponent”, as Modi said when Dalmiya died last year. Dalmiya was outmanoeuvred and expelled from the BCCI board after he was accused of misappropriating funds. He spent the next few seasons caught up in a fight to clear his name, the first of the series’ incessant high court subplots. Meanwhile, in England, we were introduced to the recently elected ECB chairman Clarke, a middle-aged businessman who made his money running a pet store. The ECB had once been the most powerful board around but were now a fading force. Clarke, mindful that Modi was looking to expand into new territories, was trying to find a way to shore up the ECB’s position against this new threat.

This was the catalyst for one of the show’s outstanding storylines. The writers introduced the memorable character of ‘Sir’ Allen Stanford, a charismatic Texan financier who lived aboard a yacht moored off his compound on the island of Antigua. Stanford, of course, enticed Clarke into a partnership by promising to stake millions of dollars on the outcome of a single match between England and his own Super Stars team. In a twist some critics later claimed to have seen coming, Stanford turned out to be a conman. His billion-dollar business was, in fact, just a massive Ponzi scheme. The series ended with Stanford being sentenced to 110 years in jail. Stanford recently returned for a cameo from his cell. He spent it rabbiting on about how he was actually an innocent man. A little like the second coming of ‘Nasty’ Nick Cotton to EastEnders, this felt like a fairly transparent attempt to boost flagging ratings.

Clarke was left casting around for a new ally. Fortunately, he soon found one. Because, back in India, a new character had come to the fore. His name was Narayanaswami Srinivasan. He had an extraordinary backstory, which included accusations that he was violently homophobic. These were made by his son, Ashwin. “I was kept under house arrest for two years,” Ashwin said in 2012, “where I was given drugs by my father to make me straight.” Srinivasan senior has repeatedly denied the charges. Otherwise, he was busy engineering his own rapid rise up through the BCCI, from treasurer in 2005, to secretary in 2008, to president in 2011. To get there, he had to get past Modi, who had been an ally of his in the early years. The internecine feud between the two was a key feature of the gripping middle seasons. In one of the most dramatic moments in the show’s history, Modi was eventually deposed the day after the 2010 IPL final. He was expelled from the BCCI, and relocated to London.

Modi has spent the years since in exile, plotting his revenge. Srinivasan, meanwhile, forged ahead towards his ultimate goals of controlling the IPL, the BCCI, the ICC, and world domination. He finally achieved this early in 2014, when, with the support of Clarke and the amiable old Australian buffer Wally Edwards, he staged a takeover at an ICC board meeting in Dubai. But, estranged from his own son, Srinivasan invested too much trust in his bone-headed son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan, and gave him a senior role on his IPL team, the Chennai Super Kings. Meiyappan was then arrested and found guilty of charges of betting and passing on information to illegal bookmakers – and was banned from all cricket-related activities for life. And hard as Srinivasan fought to hold on, his grip on the game began to slip. In 2014, pressure applied by the Supreme Court – who accused Srinivasan of a “nauseating” conflict of interest – forced him to give up his position with the BCCI. A year later, he was dethroned from the ICC too.

Of course these are only the broad strokes. There have been dozens of other storylines and subplots along the way, and hundreds of incidental characters. Fan favourites include the buffoonish Ijaz Butt, and the long-running joke about the contest between Zaka Ashraf and Najam Sethi for the chairmanship of the PCB, the slapstick exploits of Peter Chingoka at Zimbabwe Cricket, the ousting and excommunication of the former ICC CEO Haroon Lorgat, and the appearance of the mysterious multimillionaire Subhash Chandra and his Essel Group, with their odd promises of a new rebel league. All part of what you might call the programme’s rich tapestry. Which brings us right up to the latest development, the rise of Shashank Manohar, the man who has taken over from Srinivasan at both the BCCI and ICC.

Manohar has been a recurring character, but has never really caught the public’s imagination. He is a lawyer. They say he likes sweets, owns a couple of nice cars, doesn’t own a cell phone, and didn’t even have a passport until 2007. He doesn’t like the limelight. He has promised to reform both the BCCI and the ICC. Last week, he announced that he intends to lead “a complete review” of the changes made by Srinivasan, Clarke, and Edwards in 2014. He has said that the ICC must be more independent, and so from now on all future chairmen will have to give up their jobs with their domestic boards. He has said that the ICC must be more transparent, and so from now on all Full Member boards will have to present audited accounts on an annual basis. And he has said “no Member of the ICC is bigger than the other”, and so he has stripped England, Australia, and India of their permanent positions on the Executive Committee and the Financial & Commercial Affairs Committee.

All of which sounds a little too sensible. Manohar comes across like an actual sports administrator, not a star in a popular soap opera. He seems to believe that it is his business to be efficient, unobtrusive and even-handed. His reign promises to be good for the game, but terrible for the ratings.

• This is an extract taken from the Spin, the Guardian’s weekly cricket email. To subscribe just visit this page, find ‘The Spin’ and follow the instructions.