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Neil, to have thought that any tournament anywhere of this magnitude could go unhindered especially when the cases of COVID literally blows up in your face, as it has in India would be naïve. So, once the numbers got to over 300K per day, I can understand the "fear". However, I have become disillusioned with the way the game is being administered worldwide, generally. The fact that India, England and Australia have self proclaimed to be the "Big Three" and that the cricketing world now owes them a living as a result is gob-smacking. Their collective arrogance at treating other "senior" cricketing nations with utter disrespect and with impunity is a disgrace yet the rest of the cricketing fraternity still panders to these nations. I just do not get it. They (Eng/Ind/Auz) have collectively become the "Donald Trump" of the cricketing world, and they get away with it.

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The cricket world does actually owe India, and to a lesser extent Eng and Aus BIG time.

The ICC has revenue for this 'Rights Period' (2016--2023) of about US$2.7Bil. That amount is determined by the value of selling the broadcast Rights into various countries around the world, and to a lesser extent the value of sponsoring ICC events.

US$2Bil of this US$2.7Bil gets distributed to the Member nations (over 100 of them).

Now let's assume that India decides it just wants the IPL and will no longer play international cricket. What happens to the ICC revenue? It will drop to about US$0.7Bil - drop about 75% in value. Then what happens if Aus and Eng decide to just play cricket with India, because India is missing international cricket? Now ICC revenue drops to about $0.3Bil, with the major contributor to that being Pakistan.

So now let's divvy up the ICC revenue. There's 7 Tier 1 countries remaining, Afghanistan, Ireland and about 100 Associates.

Using ratios of the current Distribution Model, that would result in South Africa, for example, getting an 8yr allocation of US$33Mil.

(and even that figure is way more than their contributing value)

How much do South Africa get now?

South Africa's current 8yr allocation is U$128Mil.

Because of the value that India, Eng and Aus bring to the ICC Broadcast Rights (and to a lesser extent sponsorship), South Africa are getting US$128Mil instead of US$33Mil.

That's a 300% increase in revenue - nearly US$100Mil in absolute terms!

Should you really be complaining about 'The Big 3'?

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The situation in India,is dire, any human with a heart, should donate part of their match fees to help a country that they benefit from.

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The double standards on these covid decisions are so transparent, bizarrely this edition of IPL would have been better held in RSA (worked ok in 2009). This is the same place the australians were too scared to tour to in March. If there's one thing we've learnt from this past month, ABdV needs to be in green again.

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I enjoy your columns, pieces, articles and cricket knowledge, general and specific. Thus I ask with respect as to what your sources are iro your comments on the pandemic in India are?

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