Jay Shah has achieved a great achievement at a young age. He has become the youngest chairman of the International Cricket Council i.e. ICC. His term will start from December 1. You will be surprised to know that no one came in the way of 35-year-old Jay Shah to become the boss of ICC. He was elected unopposed as the chairman of ICC. Even though he is accused of being the son of India’s current Home Minister Amit Shah, it should not be forgotten that as an administrative officer, he has always worked for the betterment of cricket. He has reached from the district level to the global level today only because of his work. Know about his golden journey.
35-year-old Jay Shah was elected unopposed as the President of the International Cricket Council (ICC) and is the youngest to reach this position. Jay Shah is currently the Secretary of BCCI and those who have seen his working style in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) during this position are not surprised by his reaching this level. He did not reach this position suddenly, but it took him 15 years to reach here. Since 2009, he has been in the association, board or council related to cricket as an administrative officer and he has been moving forward on the basis of his work.
Reached global level from district
Jay Shah’s formal entry into cricket administration was in 2009, when he was just 20 years old. He started working at the district level with the Central Cricket Board Ahmedabad (CBCA). He then moved to state-level administration as an executive of the Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA) and eventually became its joint secretary in 2013. He was a key figure in the construction of the world’s largest cricket stadium, the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
Due to his many important contributions in the next few years, he was elected as the youngest BCCI secretary in 2019. In 2019 itself, Jai Shah was elected as the BCCI representative for the future Chief Executive Committee (CEC) meetings of the ICC. After becoming a big post in BCCI and India’s representative in the ICC, Jai Shah was appointed Chairman of the Asian Cricket Council i.e. ACC in 2021. In 2022, he also became a member of the ICC board. In early 2024, Jai Shah was re-elected as ACCC Chairman. He also became the youngest administrator to be re-appointed as ACC President.
Taking Asian cricket forward
Jai Shah has played an important role in expanding the reach of ACC, starting new tournaments and nurturing young talent. In 2022, Jai Shah moved to ICC and also became the head of the Finance and Commercial Affairs (F&CA) committee. He played an important role in advocating the inclusion of cricket in international events like the Commonwealth Games. It was during Jai Shah’s tenure that the Indian Premier League i.e. IPL touched new heights. The media rights of IPL were sold for Rs 48,390 crore for five years in 2022.
Over the years, Jay Shah has played a key role in taking the game forward in various capacities and his unique vision has earned him a global name and he will now be the chairman of the ICC. This is an important milestone for him as there have only been four such people who have been the boss of the ICC. They include Jagmohan Dalmiya, N Srinivasan, Sharad Pawar and Shashank Manohar.
IPL and WPL created history
When one looks at Shah’s five-year tenure, he had to go through a very challenging phase for two years (2020 and 2021) when Covid-19 swept the world and everything came to a halt. Overseeing the creation of bio-bubbles during the IPL, handling Covid positive cases by creating medical teams within those bubbles and ensuring the full conduct of the tournaments were among the hurdles he overcame.
Her biggest achievement was the launch of the Women’s Premier League (WPL). Under her leadership, the WPL had two consecutive successful seasons and the icing on the cake was that the league is offering the highest contract amounts in women’s T20 cricket. Her predecessors ignored this aspect of women’s cricket. Not only this, her decision to ensure equality by paying equal match fees to the Indian women’s cricket team (Rs 15 lakh per Test, Rs 8 lakh per ODI and Rs 4 lakh per T20 match for players included in the playing eleven) was a step in the right direction.
encouragement of test cricket
Apart from this, another policy decision of Jai Shah was to promote Test cricket. India will play a 10-Test match season this year and if Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli play all the matches, they will get a match fee of Rs 6 crore (Rs 60 lakh per match including Rs 45 lakh incentive). This is just Rs 1 crore less than their A Plus central retainership contract. Another major achievement of Jai Shah is the construction of the new NCA (National Cricket Academy) which is a high performance center, where several first-class matches can be organized at the same venue during the domestic season.