About

With 106 members around the world, the UAE-headquartered International Cricket Council (ICC) is the international body through which the cricket is governed, regulated and staged. A team of four lawyers and one administrative support staff assist on the legal necessities of the body. Over the last year general counsel Iain Higgins assumed the role of chief operating officer thereby making the legal team responsible for the organisation’s broader activities such as strategy, HR, IT and external relations. The small legal team has been efficient in accommodating the new workload while adding an element of modernisation in its services. The team has lead a complete review of the ICC’s current governance structure to ensure that it is in compliance with international best practices while also lending their expertise to the review of future international structures of cricket. In addition the team is involved with an advisory group in the USA to create a governance framework which would provide a sustainable foundation for the sport in the USA. The legal team is assisting on the development of the ICC’s top strategic priorities for 2016, the underlying KPI’s and the reporting of progress of the priorities. In conjunction, the team handles external relations with multiple world renowned sports events including the international Olympic Games and the Commonwealth Games Federation, to define a strategic approach for the inclusion of cricket in multi-sport game events. ICC’s digital division has evolved to include cutting edge commercial tools, in which the legal team has been providing the needed increased support. The team has been leading the coalition against on-line piracy while also cultivating against the risk of corruption at international and domestic levels of cricket. The team is praised for its successful conclusion of the Global Media Rights Agreement for ICC events which financially underpins the overall health of the entire sport of cricket. General counsel Higgins comments, ‘as with any organisation of this make up, it is a political environment and as you can imagine, achieving agreements is almost impossible. We try to overcome this by seeking alignment behind principles’.