Asian Cricket's Unseen Triangle: Power, Money and the Calendar

Asian cricket is usually viewed through the lens of India-Pakistan contests. That lens is convenient, but incomplete. The real picture of continental cricket is drawn off the field — the limited operational capacity of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC), the financial dominance of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), an overcrowded international calendar, and constant political interference. It is easy to treat these as three separate problems; in practice they are three ends of the same knot. The ACC was founded in 2026 and is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur. It has five Full Members — India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan — while countries such as the UAE, Nepal, Oman, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are affiliated as Associate Members. On paper this looks like a balanced structure. In practice, both decision-making power and the flow of money run in the same direction. The root of this imbalance is economic. India's share of the ICC's revenue distribution is the largest, and that gap has widened over the past decade rather than narrowed. When one member commands more resources than all the others combined, it also defines what 'shared interest' means. In the Asian context, the direct consequence is that the tournament calendar, the split of broadcast rights and the decision on hosting all orbit the same centre. Smaller members have no veto; they have only the room to consent. The second tension is political, and it is Asian cricket's oldest wound. Bilateral series between India and Pakistan have been suspended for years, and that status directly shapes ACC tournaments. The Asia Cup has repeatedly had to fall back on neutral venues or hybrid hosting models, because one member refuses to play in another's country. This is not merely a logistics issue. When hosting is decided by political acceptability, the economic review follows the same logic — and hosting rights, which should be a tool for developing the game, become a bargaining chip. The third tension is the calendar. The density of international cricket has risen sharply in recent years. Bilateral series, ICC events, franchise leagues and domestic competitions all demand time from the same player's body. That burden is distributed unevenly. Top-tier players feature in all three formats, play in franchise leagues, and are still expected to be available for every series. Players from smaller member nations face the opposite problem — they have fewer opportunities to play at all, because they get neither major series nor a place in franchise auctions. Franchise leagues have made this equation more complex. The IPL and the other Asian leagues that have emerged since are now a primary source of player income, but those same leagues collide with the national team calendar. For boards the dilemma is structural: the revenue from leagues is indispensable, yet securing it means moving bilateral series dates. Countries without a major league of their own can only claim the time the big leagues leave behind. The fourth, and most hopeful, shift is happening at Associate level. Teams such as Nepal, the UAE, Oman and Hong Kong have not only increased their participation in recent years but have pushed Full Members hard on occasion. Nepal's performances and its spectator base are the clearest example. But this growth comes with a structural bottleneck: these teams do not get regular, high-quality fixtures, because the Future Tours Programme framework is built primarily around Full Members. Talent develops by playing matches, and access to matches is not equal. All of this leads to a single conclusion: Asian cricket's problem is not the quality of the cricket, it is the structure. The ACC has neither the revenue power of the ICC nor the ability to impose binding decisions on its members. It functions largely as a coordinating body, where no major decision passes without the consent of the largest member. That arrangement delivers stability, but it is usually the stability of the status quo. There are routes to change, but they require uncomfortable decisions. First, fixing a defined, transparent share of revenue for Associate Members — not as development aid, but as an entitlement. Second, creating guaranteed slots for Associate teams within the Future Tours Programme so that they are not confined to qualifiers. Third, setting a shared minimum standard for player welfare, particularly workload and injury management, rather than leaving it to individual boards' discretion. Fourth, decoupling hosting decisions from political negotiation and binding them to a pre-defined, transparent process. None of these suggestions is easy. In the politics of Asian cricket, every reform has a losing side, and that side is often the most powerful one. But one thing is clear: if the future of continental cricket rests only on the broadcast rights of one or two large markets, the game's expansion will remain on paper. Cricket's strength in Asia lies in its scale; its weakness lies in a structure that cannot manage that scale fairly.