India’s cricket chief Jay Shah has been elected unopposed as chairman of the sport’s world body, the International Cricket Council, it said on Tuesday.
Shah will take over the role from December, after current Chair Greg Barclay decided not to seek a third term.
“I am humbled by the nomination as the Chair of the International Cricket Council,” Shah said in a statement.
“I am committed to working closely with the ICC team and our member nations to further globalise cricket. We stand at a critical juncture where it is increasingly important to balance the coexistence of multiple formats, promote the adoption of advanced technologies, and introduce our marquee events to new global markets. Our goal is to make cricket more inclusive and popular than ever before.”
“While we will build on the valuable lessons learned, we must also embrace fresh thinking and innovation to elevate the love for cricket worldwide.
“The inclusion of our sport in the Olympics at LA 2028 represents a significant inflection point for the growth of cricket, and I am confident that it will drive the sport forward in unprecedented ways.”
From being the chief of the world’s richest cricket board to leading the ICC, the 35-year-old’s meteoric rise illustrates India’s domination of the sport’s global administration.
In a country where the sport and politics go hand in glove, Shah is best known for being the son of home minister Amit Shah, the right-hand man of Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Shah, the powerful Secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India since 2019, becomes the youngest ICC chairman.
Top cricketers in India enjoy superstardom with millions of die-hard fans, most lucrative playing contracts, and endorsement deals not seen anywhere else in global cricket. By some counts, Indian cricket on average generates more revenue than Bollywood.
More than 90 percent of the sport’s billion-plus worldwide fans are in the Indian subcontinent, according to a 2018 ICC study.
The ICC is the global governing body for cricket, with more than 100 members, and is responsible for staging global events such as the World Cup.
India’s financial sway in the sport has put Shah - who already headed the ICC’s Finance and Commercial Affairs Committee - in a commanding position.
Shah oversaw the rapid rise of the wildly popular Indian Premier League (IPL), attracting some of world cricket’s top stars with bumper salaries in the shorter Twenty20 format of the sport.
The pioneering IPL sold its broadcast rights in 2022 for five seasons to global media giants for an eye-popping $6.2bn - putting it up amongst the highest-ranked sport leagues in cost-per-match terms.
The sport’s popularity has made the BCCI staggeringly powerful, with top politicians clinging to state associations for influence and benefits. But Shah dreams bigger.
He also heads the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) and helped push cricket’s return to the Olympic programme.
He has spoken of India’s “unparalleled global fan base”, and with cricket an Olympic sport in Los Angeles in 2028, dreams of using the sport to bolster India’s hopes of hosting the Games in 2036.
Shah’s swift career rise began in 2009 in his home state of Gujarat as a young man.
His father had earlier served himself as the president of the state’s Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA). In 2013, Shah became GCA joint secretary. It was under his watch that construction began turning the cricket ground in Gujarat’s main city Ahmedabad into the world’s largest cricket stadium, a vast 132,000-seat arena - named after Modi.
Two years later he also joined the top levels of the BCCI, and in 2019, then aged just 31, he was elected as the national board’s secretary.
His ascension to the country’s top cricketing job sparked criticism of nepotism.
In a cricket-crazy country of 1.4 billion people, where the sport is treated more like a religion than a game, Shah’s role was watched keenly.
While largely avoiding direct interviews during his tenure at the BCCI, Shah tried to cultivate an image of a young, hands-on administrator willing to take tough decisions and support players.