Grounds for concern

England practise at Mumbai in 2001. They will return there in 2006, but many other venues will be less familiar © Getty Images

"We're playing Sri Lanka next month in three Tests and no-one knows where those matches are, what's the big hurry with the ECB?" one senior board official asked. The ECB's request was a legitimate one, their manner perfectly acceptable. The problem lies in a fundamental lack of understanding of how things work in India.

The BCCI, as a body, is nothing but a collection of the state associations that have voting rights. There exists, in name, a chief executive, but no decision can be taken without the matter finally going before the working committee. This means that any decision the board takes is likely to mirror the ideas and vision of the group in power. This, in turn, means that no decision is taken purely on merit.

For example, almost anyone will agree that 21 venues for ODIs, and nine for Tests, is an unwieldy number. It is utterly unmanageable in a large country like India, and there were times in the recent India - Sri Lanka seven-match series that a player would turn up bleary-eyed at the departure lounge and fail to respond when airline staff asked where he was going. Yet, unless the system changes fundamentally, there is no way the existing system can change.

Till 2001 the board had a zonal allotment policy. This meant games went in turn to North, South, East, West and Central zones. However, some zones - South and West for example - had many more venues than the others, and this meant that a city like Mumbai or Chennai only got a match once in five years or so, while something like Indore got a match every third year. To redress this the board put in place the national rotation policy.

This policy means that the Programs and Fixtures committee, which deals with these matters, has little to beyond apply the formula. In the current season, India has 12 ODIs, and later seven more against England at - Cochin, Guwahati, Jamshedpur, Indore, Cuttack, Vishakapatnam and Goa. Now, with 19 venues having staged matches, the remaining two (Gwalior, Vijayawada) will get games in the next home one-day series, irrelevant of whom the opposition is. England may believe that they have been allotted the worst venues in India - and they won't be far from the truth when it comes to places there are playing one-dayers at - but it is certainly not through design.

It is worth asking why India has to have so many venues. Leaving aside, for a moment, the obvious reasons - taking the game to the far corners, developing cricket outside the big cities, being inclusive - there's the reason you come back to when you ask any question in Indian cricket - votes.

If you want to win an election, you need votes, and for votes, you need to keep each association happy. And when they are allotted an international match, an association certainly is happy. In the last financial year, each centre that staged a Test match received Rs43 million (£540,000 approx), and each venue that held an ODI received Rs36 million (£452,800 approx). Now apart from this, the local association has a chance to make money from gate receipts, in-stadia advertising, corporate hospitality, and a host local activities. Take the example of the recent India-Sri Lanka ODI at Jaipur. The Rajasthan Cricket Association racked up advance sales of in-stadia advertising to the tune of Rs24 million (£302,000), sold every seat in the house. In the corporate boxes, the cost of a single seat worked out to Rs125,000 (£1570 approx), this without any alcohol served or a chance to meet the players! Ashes tickets did not sell for that much. The RCA is still auditing its accounts but it is believed that they will register a profit of approximately Rs40 million (£500,000 approx) from hosting an India - Sri Lanka ODI, not even a marquee match-up by any standards. That sort of a profit keeps the association happy, and keeps a vote safe when the next elections come around.

If you did slash the number of grounds with international status drastically - to the six best in the country for example - then how would you keep the remaining associations happy? If the BCCI were to grant the ECB Tests in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, there's no doubt the English board, its players, the Barmy Army, would be pleased as punch. But the board president's pants would be on fire the next time an election came around he went to Andhra, Gujarat or Vidarbha asking for them to vote for him.

And besides, the ECB also fail to realise that the parameters they use to arrive at the suitability of a venue are far removed from what goes down on the ground. To them, Ahmedabad is a bitch of a venue. The stadium is far away from the city, the approach dusty, there's no alcohol to be had for it's a dry state, the land of Mahatma Gandhi. There isn't a nightlife to speak of. But from the BCCI's point of view, the Sardar Patel Gujarat Stadium in Motera, Ahmedabad is an excellent facility. It seats 50,000, and has recently been refurbished. So the Barmy Army may find it hard to get pissed, but that does not take away from Ahemdabad being a commercially and culturally important city in India.

At the time of writing BCCI sources told The Wisden Cricketer, "There has been no official complaint from the ECB about the venues allotted to them. The press has been moaning, but that has nothing to do with us. If the ECB complains, then we will discuss things with them. But they should not hold their breath. These venues will be passed at the next working committee meeting in late November." In the past teams touring England, dealing with the all-powerful England and Wales Cricket Board, have been treated shabbily, their smallest requests for changes in schedules met with the response that scheduling was the home board's prerogative. Now the boot is on the other foot, and the ECB are finding it's not a great place to be.