India continues to strengthen during ICC boss Jay Shah's tenure, but it may be coming at cricket's cost

If you have spent any time on the internet this week following India's T20 World Cup win, you will have come across it. 

What is "it" you ask? It is a 37-second video posted by India's social media team that is essentially a celebration montage from the final against New Zealand.

The 37-second clip is a super-cut of 16 different scenes mashed together. Of the 16 scenes, ICC chairman Jay Shah features in 12. 

In the video, Shah congratulates Indian coach Gautam Gambhir in several scenes; in another, he is waving to the crowd in Narendra Modi Stadium while walking alongside Rohit Sharma, the skipper of the 2024 World Cup-winning Indian side. 

There is even a solo shot of Shah holding the trophy, standing alone on the dais, as if he hit the winning runs in the final. He eventually lifts the trophy alongside Suryakumar Yadav, like he is India's co-captain.

Just 37 years old, Shah is cricket's youngest ever boss. He previously held roles as the secretary of the BCCI (India's cricket board) and was also the president of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC). He is the son of India's Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah.

Shah is the third Indian to be chairman since the ICC revamped its management structure in 2014.  

The Jay Shah sizzle reels, as they have been called in some corners of the internet, have now become commonplace after ICC tournaments since Shah began his tenure in December 2024. 

Shah outshone South African skipper Temba Bavuma in an ICC video following the Proteas' Test Championship Final win over Australia last year, a video that was widely mocked online.

While the clip from the WTC Final was laughable, the ICC wanting to promote its boss made sense in a roundabout, twisted way, even if you would not see the boss of any other sport featured this much in a highlight clip from the final.

It is like Gianni Infantino featuring more than Lionel Messi in a highlight video from the 2022 FIFA World Cup final.

The boss of cricket featuring this much in a video posted by the BCCI and showing a copious amount of glee in India's win makes you wonder where the ICC's priorities truly lie. 

There is no questioning that Shah has been good for Indian cricket. His major wins include the creation of the WPL, the biggest women's cricket league in the world, the successful hosting of the 2023 men's World Cup in India, and ensuring India's men's and women's players receive equal prize money from the ICC.

Shah has also been instrumental in cricket being included in the 2028 Olympics. However, beyond that, it is not clear how he has helped the game grow as a whole.

It was fitting that the T20 World Cup basically started and ended with questions over India's considerable influence on the game, and whether it is abusing its power.

Bangladesh was booted out of the tournament in the lead-up for refusing to play matches in India due to security concerns, despite India having done the same with Pakistan for the Champions Trophy.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) asked for all its matches to be played in Sri Lanka, the tournament's co-host, but India decided this was not good enough and sent the side packing, with Scotland taking its place.

This was followed by India's real scare of the tournament — Pakistan threatening to boycott its clash against India in solidarity with Bangladesh. 

No matter where a tournament is held, who the favourites are, or any other factors, you will find that India and Pakistan are always in the same pool at an ICC tournament.

The reason? The incredible interest in the fixture generates more money for the ICC and its members than anything else in world cricket, something to the tune of $US250 million in revenue.

The match was eventually played in Sri Lanka and was won by India, as usually tends to be the case at an ICC tournament. 

India crossed the 200-run mark in just one of its first five matches of the World Cup. In the fifth of those matches, against South Africa, they were rolled for just 111 in Ahmedabad, the same venue where the final was played.

Following that 76-run loss, India scored more than 250 in three of its next four matches, scoring 199 in a run chase against the West Indies in the other. It must be said that on the three occasions India breached the 250 mark, it was asked to bat first by the opposing skipper each time.

Unlike bilateral series, where the home team gets to prepare whatever wickets it wants, ICC tournaments do not allow the surface to be controlled in such a way, even if you are the host nation. 

Nevertheless, due to the common threads between the ICC, the BCCI and Shah himself, it opens India up to suggestions that it had asserted its power to alter the nature of pitches for the remainder of the World Cup. 

This is sad on two counts. One, it takes the attention completely away from some absolutely sensational individual performances that delivered India the trophy.

Sanju Samson, a batter seemingly forever on the fringes of the Indian team, became a household name in not only Indian cricket but in world cricket.

Jasprit Bumrah cemented his status as one of the greatest bowlers to ever play the sport. 

Secondly, the cloud of India having too much power in the game hovered over what was an incredibly entertaining tournament overall. 

This was the second T20 World Cup to be expanded to 20 teams, and featured Italy for the first time. 

For a sport that has been crying out for the other nations to challenge the "Big 3" of India, England and Australia, this tournament delivered in spades.

Zimbabwe knocked off both Australia and Sri Lanka to reach the Super 8s, the US had India reeling and won two matches, while both Italy and Nepal came within a few blows of beating England. 

Canada's Yuvraj Samra provided one of the innings of the tournament when he smashed a 65-ball 110 against New Zealand, an innings that made him the first player from an associate nation to score a World Cup century.

The associate nations, even in their losses, showed that there is absolute value in choosing to invest in them. Whether the ICC does that or not is an entirely different question.

After all of the excitement from a genuinely entertaining group stage, in classic ICC style, the tournament scored an own goal in a way only cricket can by going with pre-seeding for the Super 8s, where the groups were decided not by the performances in the tournament, but each team's ICC world ranking in T20s.

It left us with a farcical situation where each of the group winners were placed in one pool while each of the losers were placed in the other.

Imagine a FIFA World Cup where France faces Argentina early on in the tournament simply because of their world ranking, rather than how they fared in the group stage.

It is these instances of shooting itself in the foot that truly hold cricket back in the eyes of many.

This brings us all back to Shah, his sizzle reels and the objectives of his role as the chairman of the ICC. 

When Shah was unanimously appointed to the role midway through 2024, he said: "My commitment is to work closely with the ICC team and our member nations to globalise cricket further."

Since he began in his role in December of that year, India has won every tournament that matters, while everyone else has been relegated to watching Shah lapping it up with the players and snatching the trophy from their hands at every opportunity.

Is Shah's remit to make cricket stronger as a whole, or to make India stronger at the expense of its rivals?

Indian fans will read all of this, say "cry more", and point to their trophy cabinet and their coffers as enough evidence that cricket is in a good spot. 

The rest of the world might just beg to differ, particularly those countries that currently reside outside of the lavish "Big 3" bungalow.