HONG KONG-The In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil has de­layed un­til Oc­to­ber any change to how it ap­points its pres­i­dent. The ex­ec­u­tive board, on the last day of its meet­ing yes­ter­day, unan­i­mous­ly agreed on an ur­gent in­de­pen­dent re­view of its struc­ture and process, to be com­plet­ed by the next board meet­ing in Oc­to­ber. The ICC has pro­posed al­low­ing vot­ing for an in­de­pen­dent pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent. But Pak­istan and Bangladesh have ob­ject­ed, as on ro­ta­tion it's their turn to nom­i­nate can­di­dates in 2014. Bangladesh says it's hap­py for an amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion to be en­act­ed af­ter 2014. Bangladesh and Pak­istan gave un­der­tak­ings not to nom­i­nate a can­di­date be­fore the ex­ter­nal re­view is com­plet­ed and the mat­ter is again con­sid­ered by the ex­ec­u­tive board.

"I whole­heart­ed­ly wel­come an in­de­pen­dent re­view of the en­tire ICC gov­er­nance and re­gard this as a ma­jor step to meet stake­hold­er ex­pec­ta­tions and the high stan­dards of a world-class or­ga­ni­za­tion," ICC chief ex­ec­u­tive Ha­roon Lor­gat said in a state­ment. The in­de­pen­dent re­view was al­so to study the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tors. Mean­while, Pak­istan, which has not host­ed a ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al team since gun­men at­tacked the Sri Lan­ka team in 2009, re­quest­ed to host an ICC event in 2018. The ICC didn't rule it out, al­though it has yet to sched­ule an event in 2018. "We ful­ly un­der­stand the PCB re­quest, and we will con­sid­er if it is pos­si­ble to host an event in Pak­istan sub­ject to the stan­dard safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty clear­ances," Lor­gat said.

The Pak­istan Task Team, set up fol­low­ing the 2009 at­tack to help keep Pak­istan in­volved in in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, wrapped up with 63 rec­om­men­da­tions which will be con­sid­ered by the PCB. A de­tailed re­port on the 2011 World Cup-joint­ly host­ed by In­dia, Sri Lan­ka and Bangladesh - "high­light­ed cer­tain short­com­ings around tick­et­ing and sta­dia con­struc­tion," the ICC said. Wankhede Sta­di­um, the venue for the fi­nal, and the three Sri Lan­ka venues missed con­struc­tion dead­lines and were not cleared un­til the eve of the tour­na­ment.

How­ev­er, Eden Gar­dens wasn't cleared in time and had a match tak­en away. The board says sta­dia at all ICC events must be ready six months be­fore­hand. It al­so not­ed foren­sic au­di­tors were re­view­ing tick­et­ing, in­clud­ing al­le­ga­tions of black mar­ke­teer­ing.