icc elections: Round one of ICC elections: ‘Barclay 10, Khwaja 6, logic 0’ | Cricket News – Times of India

MUMBAI: In what could possibly be one of the strangest and among the most bizarre elections witnessed in a very long time, the candidate getting the most number of votes through an electronic ballot is not being considered the winner. Instead, two more rounds of voting will be held to see if the candidate with the lesser number of votes can manage to retain two-thirds of the entire ballot in order to wrest the chair.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has managed to do what no other sports federation anywhere in the world did – including the FIFA – by laying down a one-of-its-kind voting policy to elect a new chairperson, a policy that has left the entire cricket fraternity scratching its head in recent weeks.
New Zealand’s Greg Barclay and Imran Khwaja (according to ICC, he doesn’t represent any country) are the two candidates in the fray. The first round of ballot was held on Wednesday and ended with Barclay getting 10 votes and Khwaja six.
There are a total of 16 votes – 12 full members, one female independent member, two associate members and one vote that belongs to Khwaja (because he’s on the board). Despite getting 10 votes out of 16, Barclay is not the winner because to win the election, a candidate ‘actually needs to lose it’.
Here’s how it works: Khwaja needs two-thirds of the 16 votes (7) to continue as ICC chairperson. Barclay needs 11 of the 16 votes to stop Khwaja from getting those seven votes if he needs to take over the ICC chair.
If Khwaja doesn’t get a minimum of seven votes and Barclay doesn’t get a minimum of 11 votes – which is what happened after Wednesday’s ballot – the election moves to Round 2 where a similar policy is once again applied. If there is no result in Round 2, the election moves to Round 3 and once again the same policy will be applied. Even after Round 3, if there is no result, Khwaja will continue as chairman for a stipulated period of time.
“Heads, I win. Tails, you lose. That’s the only way I can sum up this election,” a board member told TOI, adding: “It’s 10-6 between Barclay and Khwaja but logic is zero. Imagine, someone of the stature of Indra Nooyi is also a voter in this election”.
Nooyi, the former chief executive at PepsiCo and consistently ranked among the world’s 100 most powerful women, is the independent female director at the ICC.
“Nobody has an idea if she’s fine with this election process. But, well, she did cast her vote on Wednesday,” say those tracking developments.
The stranger bit is nobody in the ICC is willing to share which country Khwaja represents in international cricket. A lawyer by profession, 64-year-old Khwaja was elected Associate Member representative in 2018 before coming on the ICC board as director. “Which country’s nomination did he have? A recent media report said Mozambique nominated him. The ICC has never answered this question,” sources say.
If it is true, then a representative from Mozambique is contesting elections for the ICC chairman’s post.
“That’s like Malta or Surinam nominating a representative for FIFA president,” sources add.
For the record, former England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chairman Colin Graves – despite showing serious interest – could not contest this election because his home board refused to nominate him.
“But Khwaja can contest because ICC says it’s the rule. So Graves required nomination but Khwaja didn’t. This is like the person who brings the coin to the game wins the toss,” say those tracking developments.
The ICC hasn’t shared any official communication whatsoever with regards to the election process barring a statement on October 12 that the deadline for nominations would conclude six days later.
Khwaja, for the record, is the interim chairman at the ICC – a role he took over after the exit of Shashank Manohar and is considered to be “close” to the Nagpur-based lawyer.