'ALL THE ACES'

Henry Orenstein holds over 100 patents. Among the various schemes and dreams concocted by this remarkable man are a beautician's chair, a doll whose hair grows longer when you pull on its arm, and the heat-sensitive stickers that told you whether the Transformer you were holding was an Autobot or a Decepticon. But the single most influential idea of the many that grew out of Orenstein's fertile mind came in 1981, when he was watching a poker game on ESPN.

There were six hands in a row in which nobody called, so the viewers never got to see the who was holding what cards. "The thought struck me," Orenstein said, "that if we put a camera in there, and we were able to see the pro's cards, that would make the thing much more interesting." It took him four weeks to knock up a prototype. As the writer John Vorhaus told Grantland, "With the invention of the hole cam, we have the omniscience as an audience that we never had before … Suddenly, we can look at poker as an exercise in storytelling." By 2008, 2.5m people were tuning in to watch ESPN's coverage of the World Series final.

Poker, like chess, is as an oft-overused analogy. But it will serve again here, as we try to make sense of the International Cricket Council's discussions of the position paper on the restructuring of international cricket. This is a power game between the boards, with the three proponents lobbying, bullying, seducing, each of the seven remaining full members to try and extract the votes they need. It has already been suggested that the idea of promotion and relegation between two divisions of Test teams could be scrapped. That was given away so quickly it is worth asking whether anyone was committed to the concept at all, or if it was simply included to extract leverage. Another concession is that, as Mike Selvey reported on Monday, a fifth member could be added to the new Executive Committee.

Poker is also an apt comparison because of the efficacy of this essential image, offered up to Osman Samiuddin by one anonymous board chairman: "All the aces are in the BCCI's hands." As is most of the money. The paper states that India contribute 80% of the ICC revenue, and while the exact accuracy of that figure has been questioned by former ICC president Ehsan Mani, no one doubts that the BCCI have by far the largest share of the pot. The 10 full members of the ICC are playing a game in which one controls the cards and the cash.

Sadly, the ICC hasn't had hole cams installed in its conference tables, its fear of transparency outweighing even its love of a quick buck. If we can't achieve the kind of omniscience that Orenstein introduced to poker, we can, at least, piece together the accurate information we do have from the boards' own financial statements to get an idea about the kinds of cards everyone else is holding, the state of play, and the story unfolding in Dubai.

Take the West Indies Cricket Board. During his election campaign, the new WICB president Dave Cameron explained that the organisation was expecting to make an $8m loss for 2012. But in 2011, its financial statements show that it made a profit of $14m. The biggest single reason for the swing is that in 2011 India came to the Caribbean and played one T20, three Tests and five ODIs. The tour brought in $22.3m for the WICB.

Next, Sri Lanka. The cost of hosting the 2011 World Cup left the SLCB $69m in debt. As recently as January 2012, they were unable to pay the wages of their contracted players. In the end, they borrowed $3.9m from the Bank of Ceylon. They were able to do that, the SLC treasurer Nuski Mohammad explained, largely because "we knew that the Indian cricket team was due in Sri Lanka". They came to play five matches and a T20 that summer.

Cricket South Africa made a loss of $4.2m in 2012 and more than that in 2013. Despite that, the board's chief financial officer Naasei Appiah explained in October that he was confident that it "had reserves on hand to see us through to the end of 2013-14" because of the "full end-of-year tour by India" which was later cut short. "Our best years," he said, "include the ICC World Cup, every four years, and tours against India."

The Pakistan Cricket Board is projecting losses of $5.2m this year. It lost $80m of its $135m broadcasting deal with Ten Sports, which expired last year, because the terms included a clause that stipulated Pakistan "had to play at least two home series with India in a four year cycle". India never came. Pakistan are currently negotiating their TV deals on a series-by-series basis.

New Zealand Cricket returned of a surplus in 2012-13, of $124,000. But the year before that it lost $1.5m. When the team beat West Indies in three days last December, the NZC chief executive David White said that he could swallow the revenues lost from the lack of play on the fourth and fifth days because "our budget for the pre-Christmas Tests is not significant. Our big budget series is the Indian one."

Zimbabwe's players have been on strike for the last month because they haven't been paid since the start of the season. This despite the fact India have been on tour to Zimbabwe three times in the last four years. Accurate information about the financial state of the Bangladesh Cricket Board is harder to come by.

At least six of the seven players, then, have avowedly expressed their dependence on the BCCI. "All the aces." The BCCI is clear that the one aspect of the proposal it views as non-negotiable is the redistribution of revenues, and has suggested that it will withdraw from future ICC events unless that, at least, is agreed to. It would still be able to play bilateral series, and, as the list above suggests, wouldn't be short of opponents. If the damage to the World Cup wouldn't be as severe as some fear, even the threat of India's withdrawal would hobble the ICC's upcoming negotiations of the next round of TV rights. At the same time, the seven boards know there is a real possibility, elucidated in Mani's paper on the leaked proposal, that the redistribution will leave them even worse off.

Which leaves the England and Wales Cricket Board and Cricket Australia. There have been reports that the ECB chairman Giles Clarke has also threatened to "part ways" with the other members in ICC meetings. The two boards best equipped to oppose the BCCI are in league with them. This too must be understood as a two-way power play, with the ECB and CA seeking to grab the BCCI by the coat-tails, and, by holding on, haul themselves on while also pulling the Indian board back.

Again, it is worth asking what other cards the ECB and CA have to play. They couldn't possibly pick up the slack in the finances of those six boards. And by the end of the current Ashes tour, England and Australia will have played each other 25 times in the space of seven months. They are due to play at least 13 more matches against each other in 2015. How much more milk can be squeezed from the cow? Clarke has tried standing up to the BCCI before. On that occasion, the ECB ended up being shut out of the Champions League, and signing up with Allen Stanford. It would take a brave man to call the bluff of an opponent with more money, better cards, and who beat him the last time the two played this game.

By allying with the BCCI, the ECB and CA are trying to negotiate a commitment from the BCCI to both the World Cup and a form of Future Tours Programme, just as they themselves have said they will aim to play home and away series against all nine members at least once every eight years. By allying with the BCCI, the ECB and CA have also shafted CSA, who have been frozen out of these negotiations and also of the mooted Test Cricket Fund. This is the single shabbiest aspect of the whole affair. South Africa, the best Test team of this era, and the oldest after England and Australia, are being bullied. It's not just distasteful, but disgraceful. The associate members, too, must wonder what exactly is in this for them given how much they stand to lose and that the promise of the possibility of promotion may be withdrawn.

This strategy has cost a lot, then, and, if it works, there is no guarantee that it will be anything other than a short-term fix which also creates long-term problems. Measured against the abandoned ideals of the Woolf report, it is a desperately poor solution. But then other people's ideals don't reckon much when the game is on and the BCCI is at the table with a sizeable pile of chips and a couple of aces in the hole. Four boards, the BCB, SLCB, CSA, and PCB are reported to have agreed to oppose the proposals, but it is conspicuous that they are only to be asking for a deferral on the issue, which would simply allow more time for horse trading.

Anyone who is aghast that the individual boards all acting in their own interests may also be startled to discover that dogs bark and shocked to learn that bears crap in woods. Which doesn't mean that they don't deserve to be criticised, only that we shouldn't be surprised when they don't listen or change. Henry Kissinger said: "There no permanent friends or enemies" – or ideals – "only interests."

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