This week has seen another installment of the well-known soap opera.
The BCCI has insisted that it should enjoy a vast payment from the ICC, because private Indian TV channels allegedly pay 80% of the revenue cricket earns worldwide.
As usual, we are told that if the ICC fails to pay up:
1. India might withdraw from ICC tournaments.
2. India might exit international cricket entirely, and play a 6 or 9 month IPL offering far more money to foreign players than representing their countries.
3. India would easily scoop up the elite cricketers of the poorer countries like South Africa and New Zealand.
4. The rest of the cricket world will go broke unless it pays India what it demands.
But is this actually true? What would happen if India really did leave the ICC? And how much money would the remaining cricket world have to pay its players?
The thing is, we can actually answer those questions. It's not just a matter of speculation.
What do cricketers earn now?
The top New Zealand cricketers are on the following retainers from New Zealand Cricket:
1. Kane Williamson NZ$200,000
2. Martin Guptill NZ$193,000
3. Trent Boult NZ$186,000
6. BJ Watling NZ$165,000
10. Tom Latham NZ$137,000
16. Mitchell Santner NZ$95,000
These are topped up by up to $150,000 by match fees.
Source:
http://sportsmaza.com/cricket/new-zealand-cricketers-salary/
South Africa's top players earn even less:
1. AB De Villiers US$120,000
2. Hashim Amla US$111,000
8. Morne Morkel US$75,000
Source:
http://sportsmaza.com/cricket/south-african-cricketers-salary/
In contrast, Australia's top 20 players are all on A$900,000 retainers, apart from Steve Smith who gets an extra $212,000 for being the national captain.
Source:
http://www.totalsportek.com/cricket/australian-player-salaries/
How much do other Australian sports without Indian revenue pay in salaries?
This can be worked out for four Australian winter sports - all variants of football - which each have a team salary cap, which is the amount of money each team spends on player salaries per season. But let's restrict ourselves to the main two.
Australian Football League: 18 teams, minimum salary spend $10,336,000 per team. TOTAL MINIMUM SALARY SPEND = $186 million per season.
National Rugby League: 16 teams, minimum salary spend $7.1 million (provided as a block grant per club), TOTAL MINIMUM SALARY SPEND = $114 million per season.
What does this mean?
The two main Australian winter sports of Rugby League and Aussie Rules pay their players a combined $300 million in salaries per year.
But they each are watched only by people in certain states, as follows:
Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, Western Australia - AFL
Queensland, New South Wales, New Zealand's North Island - NRL
And neither sport earns any significant money at all from overseas TV rights.
In effect, even without a cent in Indian TV revenue, there is no reason to think that Australia and England ALONE would be unable to fund salaries for the whole of world cricket.
And much higher salaries than the paltry NZ$95,000 per year that Mitchell Santner is paid by New Zealand Cricket.
So how could world cricket resist India?
The key, obviously, is for the other countries to accept centralised scheduling by the ICC and for all TV revenue to be paid to the ICC.
In fact, even if India refused to play, there is every reason to think that some revenue would be earned from Indian channels anyway.
The ICC would then contract all international cricketers itself, on salaries significantly higher than most of its constituent boards can currently afford.
If we assume 5 bands, they might look something like this:
Tier 1: Elite Global Superstars (Smith, Root et al) $600,000 per year
Tier 2: Top Internationals (Shakib, Sarfraz, Boult et al) $500,000 per year
Tier 3: Established Internationals (Watling, Asad Shafiq et al) $400,000 per year
Tier 4: Occasional Internationals (Neesham, Rahat Ali et al) $300,000 per year
Tier 5: Emerging youngsters (Shadab et al) $200,000 per year
These sums would be topped up by T20 league contracts which each Board would control directly. But T20 leagues would be played in 4 week windows, with no player allowed to play in more than 2 T20 leagues.
Why would this work?
There are only 10 international cricket teams and each one would have 20 designated international players with an effective cap of $8 million per country.
This would mean a grand total of $80 million per year on salaries for the world's top cricketers - less than half as much as Australian Rules Football.
Only 3 non-Indian or Australian regular international cricketers in the world would lose money: Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Alastair Cook. Perhaps Cricket Australia would have to be allowed to continue to top up wages to their current levels.
But New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe would see their players triple the value of their current contracts, at the very minimum.
The act of pooling revenue and of centralising and standardising contracting of ALL international cricketers would protect international cricket from the threat of India being able to hijack the best players to an extended IPL.
Mitchell Santner employed today by New Zealand Cricket on NZ$95,000 per year might well be tempted by a year-round IPL contract. But employed by the ICC on US$400,000 per year? Probably not!
Likewise Quinton De Kock. Currently Cricket South Africa pays him US$111,000 per year. A centralised ICC contract would be in either the $600,000 or $500,000 band.
Conclusion
At present, the poorer countries' players are vulnerable to being poached by higher salary offers from a 6 month IPL.
But if the ICC took over scheduling, TV revenue and contracting, it could protect its sport by ensuring that players from places like South Africa, New Zealand and Pakistan earned enough money to stay in official cricket.
Plus, of course, the current enormous financial incentives for cricketers from those countries to fix which currently exists would be wiped out.
Is this affordable? The fact that the entire global international cricket contract cost would be less than half of the existing Australian Rules Salary Cap suggests that it most definitely is affordable.
even though technically you are an aussie now which makes you a bit more likeable 
