“He is treating everyone like he is the home minister of the ICC”

Earlier this month, the International Council for Cricket released a series of promotional videos celebrating South Africa’s win over Australia in the final of the World Test Cricket series. One of the main videos, which featured highlights from the final, became instantly controversial. The forty-five-second video featured at least eleven shots of Jay Shah, the ICC chair. Cricket fans across the world mocked the ICC for giving Shah more screen time than the players themselves—one cricket commentator said the cameras had followed Shah “slavishly,” while another said it was as if “ICC’s chairman is the real man of the match for just showing up.” The ICC deleted the video, only to repost it again not long after.

Before entering the cricket administration world, Shah was best known for being the son of India’s home minister, Amit Shah. He began his career in cricket board in Gujarat, under his father. He was appointed the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the richest and most powerful body in the cricketing world, in 2019. After serving two terms, he moved on to become the chairman of the ICC, in December 2024.

In September 2023, Sharda Ugra, a veteran sports journalist, wrote a cover story for The Caravan on how Shah’s tenure at the BCCI became synonymous with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s increasing control over cricket in India. The BCCI, in the past decade and a half, has become wealthier than it has ever been, but also remains outside regulatory control. While it has its deepest connections at the top, its core is hollowed out by abuse and exploitation of domestic players across ages and genders.

The following extract from the piece covers Ugra’s reporting on how Shah centralised control over the BCCI, and how his influence spilled over into the ICC.