Defending his vote in favour of International Cricket Council shifting its office, Chairman of England and Wales Cricket Board David Morgan has said the impending move was "inevitable" from the moment the Treasury refused to offer tax concessions for international sports federations.
After Sports Minister Richard Caborn held a futile emergency meeting with the ICC Chairman Ehsan Mani, Morgan said the financial argument had become irresistible, making the historical importance of Lord's an irrelevance.
"I would have loved the ICC to stay at Lord's and, had the Treasury seen fit to offer tax concessions, its future would have been assured for 10 years," Morgan said.
"But the Treasury's refusal meant that I had to act in cricket's best interests. We had to operate from one tax-efficient environment and Dubai was an opportunity we could not ignore," he said.
According to The Daily Telegraph, the ICC's vote in favour of Dubai last month was cricket's worst-kept secret, but only when the 11-1 margin became apparent yesterday did Caborn meet Mani for the first time.
UK Sport had persuaded the ICC to suspend its vote to move to Dubai last June when it promised to seek government tax concessions, but the Department for Culture, Media and Sport found no sympathy at the Treasury.
A spokesman for the DCMS said: "Richard was keen to offer Ehsan Mani the opportunity to discuss the issues and to restate our desire for them to remain in London, but clearly they have had a generous offer for relocation."
