MUMBAI: Hailing

BCCI

secretary

Jay Shah

, who was elected unopposed as the next chairman of the

International Cricket Council

on Tuesday, cricket legend

Sunil Gavaskar

told TOI that “it won’t be a surprise if the world game flourishes even more during his term as the

ICC chairman

.”
The 35-year-old is the youngest-ever to take over the prestigious position.

Reacting to Shah succeeding

Greg Barclay

in the ICC top post, Gavaskar told this paper: “That’s wonderful news. All the ICC presidents from India have taken the game forward and brought more revenues for the ICC and with it for the other member countries. If one leaves political biases aside, one will agree that Jay Shah has taken massive steps for Indian cricket.”

Listing out Shah’s achievements as the

BCCI secretary

from 2019, Gavaskar said, “He was mainly instrumental in getting the Women’s Premier League (WPL) off the ground, made the Indian women international cricketers’ fees on par with the Indian men’s team, increased the pension for retired cricketers, brought in incentives for being available for Test and white-ball internationals and introduced prize money for the domestic tournaments. The new state-of-the-art

National Cricket Academy

(NCA, in Bangalore) has also come about during his tenure.”

“With all this in front of us it won’t be a surprise if the world game flourishes even more during his term as the ICC chairman,” Gavaskar concluded.