New Zealand's Greg Barclay elected as ICC's second Independent Chairman, talks about the importance of ICC events

New Zealand's Greg Barclay has been elected as the new Chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC). 

Barclay, who has been a commercial lawyer in New Zealand and the Director of New Zealand Cricket (NZC) since 2012, becomes second independent Chairman of ICC after India's Shashank Manohar whom he has succeeded.

Barclay was NZC's reprentative on the ICC Board and will resign from his role and will replace the interim chairman Imran Khwaja, who was elected for the time being after Manohar's two-year term ended in July.

Speaking on him getting elected, Barclay said, "It is an honour to be elected as the Chair of the International Cricket Council and I would like to thank my fellow ICC Directors for their support. I hope we can come together to lead the sport and emerge from the global pandemic in a strong position and poised for growth."

"I look forward to working in partnership with our Members to strengthen the game in our core markets as well as grow it beyond that ensuring more of the world can enjoy cricket. I take my position as a custodian of the game very seriously and am committed to working on behalf of all 104 ICC Members to create a sustainable future for our sport.

"I'd like to thank Imran Khwaja for his leadership as acting ICC Chair during a difficult period for the game and I look forward to continuing a close working relationship with him in the future," he added.

Greg Barclay has been elected as the new Independent Chair of the International Cricket Council.

Barclay joins from New Zealand Cricket where he has been a director since 2012 and also served as a director of the 2015 ICC @cricketworldcup.

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— ICC (@ICC) November 24, 2020

'ICC has to deliver in World events, or else sport will suffer'

Speaking to Reuters on Wednesday, the newly elected Chairman said that the ICC has to deliver the world events like the World Cups, Test Championship over the next two-three years otherwise they will have suffer serious financial consequences after the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic induced reschedulings and delays.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, ICC had to rescedule a few ICC tournaments including the men's T20 World Cup and Women's World Cup and T20 World Cup.

"We have got to deliver the world events that are to come and those that are postponed. Not just for the cricketing outcomes but there are commercial concerns as well," said Barclay.

While the 2020 T20 World Cup has been delayed to 2021, another Men's T20 World Cup will take place in 2022. The Women's World Cup in New Zealand has been postponed to 2022 from its earlier slate of February 2021. Also, because of women's T20 tournament in Commonwealth Games in 2022, Women's T20 World cup has been postponed to 2023 and Men's Cricket World Cup 2023 in India has been shifted to later that year to the October-November window.

"If we fail to deliver all of those events then we will be penalised by the broadcasters and we won't receive the last of the ongoing payments.

"That, in turn, is going to affect the ICC's ability to invest in its own programmes and enable it to make distributions to mebers. Unfotunately, a lot of the ICC members are heavily reliant on those disbursements," he added.