FICA's Paul Marsh in ICC firing line

ICC has hit back at FICA’s executive chairman Paul Marsh (not in pic)

International Cricket Council chiefs hit back on Thursday at claims they failed to investigate concerns over the correctness of last month’s vote for player representatives on its cricket committee.

World cricket’s global governing body was criticised earlier by the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations (FICA), whose executive chairman, Paul Marsh, said a request for the issue to be referred to the ICC’s ethics officer had been ignored.

However, the ICC hit back by accusing FICA of undermining previously constructive talks.

“Today a statement issued by the FICA executive chairman Paul Marsh alleges that there has been ‘no action for six weeks’ on the FICA complaint about the vote for players representatives on the ICC cricket committee,” the ICC statement said.

“Given this untrue statement the ICC has no alternative, but to refute angrily this argument and state the true facts.

“The facts of this matter are clear. Following several weeks of communications and discussions between ICC executives and FICA, on Tuesday 25 June 2013 senior ICC executives and leading board members from ICC full and non-full member countries met with Ian Smith, the FICA chief operating officer, in London with a view to resolving the issues which had been raised by FICA.

“Sadly, within no more than 48 hours of those constructive talks – without reverting to the ICC – FICA’s executive chairman chose to issue an emotive press release, which we believe was a breach of trust of the processes and protocols agreed at the London discussions.”

FICA has questioned the validity of a vote by the 10 full-member captains last month that saw the players’ union’s ex chief executive Tim May, a former Australia off-spinner, lose his place on the cricket committee, with Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, a former India spinner and currently employed as a television commentator, voted in.

“We have evidence of captains being pressured by their boards into changing their votes away from the incumbent player representative on the committee Tim May, in favour of Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, and we will present this to the ethics officer,” said Marsh, the son of Australia great Rodney Marsh.

FICA’s announcement came during the ICC’s annual conference, which is currently being held in London, with officials accusing Marsh of underhand tactics in releasing a statement when most of the governing body’s top brass were in bed.

“ICC are angry and disappointed that Mr Marsh chose to notify ICC of this change of direction only at 1.31am UK time (1231GMT) on Thursday and then issued their misleading statement at 4.30am on the same day — when all board members and executives, in London for ICC annual conference, were asleep.”