KEY POINTS:
Cricket's bosses - the International Cricket Board not the Indian powerbrokers - are in Dubai this week trying to maintain their position as governors of the game.
Their grip on it looks distinctly slippery as the Indian Premier League, and its boss, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, enlarge their authority over the world game.
Consider its latest move. The IPL has offered the financially troubled Sri Lankan board US$70 million ($113 million) provided it supports India's Twenty20 plans for the next 10 years. It will effectively give India control over Sri Lankan cricket.
Sri Lanka are due to tour England next year, a late arrangement owing to Zimbabwe's trip there being called off. Thirteen Sri Lankans have IPL contracts for next year. Sri Lanka's Sports Minister, Gamini Lokuge, requested those players be released from the England tour, leaving a second-string side to visit England.
Cue understandable fury from the England and Wales Cricket Board, who are also aware several leading players privately hope the Sri Lankan visit is called off so they can rake in IPL cash.
Sri Lanka's cricket boss, the tough, feisty former captain Arjuna Ranatunga, who insisted the England tour must proceed, has been kneecapped. The ECB is poised to can the tour, leaving a significant gap in its home international programme.
The IPL's second edition is due to run from April 10 to May 25. Sri Lanka's internationals in England are pencilled in for May 7-30.
When the IPL was set up, organiser Lalit Modi and the BCCI stressed it would not interfere with test cricket. The ICC chief executive, Haroon Lorgat, insisted on "test cricket'sprimacy".
It is all ringing hollow right now, especially for the ICC who approved the setting up of the IPL to counter the so-called "rebel" Indian Cricket League. The privately run ICL now appeals as a ring-fenced, happy operation for young up-and-coming Indians and former internationals.
The ICC president, David Morgan, let rip at the IPL-Sri Lanka deal. It was "quite unacceptable behaviour against the background of Sri Lanka's signed agreement with the ECB".
The Future Tours Programme, which expires in 2012, is under discussion. The ICC is trying to find a way to fit together a complex calendar into a shape to suit everyone, including a window for the IPL. Fat chance.
The worry for the ICC is that as the financially muscular IPL's power grows, if it does not like what it sees from the governing body, it might opt to steamroll over the ICC schedule.
As England's Guardian newspaper put it, if the ICC does not regain control of the game with an enforceable calendar to keep everyone happy, "then, rather than make an impending move into luxurious new offices in Dubai's sports city, it might as well just turn out the lights".
