Palani, Bhatnagar and Klair elected to ICC Chief Executives’ Committee

New Delhi, July 17
Gurumurthy Palani, Anurag Bhatnagar and Gurdeep Klair have been elected to the influential Chief Executives‘ Committee (CEC) of the International Cricket Council (ICC).


Palani (France), Bhatnagar (Hong Kong), and Klair (Canada) won the elections for the three CEC spots ahead of incumbents Sumod Damodar (Botswana) and Sankar Renganathan (Sierra Leone). The trio winning the elections were confirmed by their respective boards’ social media handles.

Apart from Damodar and Renganathan, Tim Cutler (Vanuatu), Stella Siale (Samoa) and Sarah Gomersall (Jersey) were also in the fray in the CEC elections, whose voting process involved 40 associate members and five regional representatives from Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and East Asia-Pacific.

The CEC is one of the ICC’s most powerful boards, comprising of all Full Member nation board representatives and elected Associate representatives. The CEC plays an influential decision making role in shaping policies, governance around promotion and the direction of cricket being played and organised at the international level.

The Associate Member seats are of huge importance as they serve as a critical link between the ICC’s top board and the member countries outside of it. Under ICC rules, candidates for CEC elections had to be a representative of an Associate Member or a current/past ICC director.

Palani, Bhatnagar and Klair will now have two-year terms and the trio will also be part of the Associate Member Committee, which works towards governing and regulating cricket at the Associate level.

The elections for the three coveted Associate Member seats on the CEC marked the commencement of the ICC’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Singapore on Thursday and is slated to run till July 20.

It’s also the first major ICC AGM happening under chairman Jay Shah and newly-appointed CEO Sanjog Gupta.