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Cardiff is one of three contenders, with Colombo and Singapore, to replace Dubai as the administrative base of the International Cricket Council. That is one of the more unlikely and intriguing proposals in the leaked working paper of the ICC's financial and commercial affairs committee, to be discussed at a board meeting on Wednesday week, which has inevitably been overlooked in the global furore provoked by the desire of England, Australia and India to seize greater control of the game.
There is no chance of the ICC leaving the jurisdiction of the United Arab Emirates, where it has been based since leaving Lord's in 2005. But in its working paper, which has been seen by the Guardian, the F&CA stresses: "Under UAE laws it is not necessary for the management to be located in the same jurisdiction.
"This facilitates the possible relocation of ICC management from Dubai to any potentially more favourable location where local talent is also available. The F&CA is currently in the final stages of evaluating these options, including reviewing the comparative advantages and disadvantages of Singapore, Colombo, Cardiff and Dubai as the administrative home of the ICC, and will report back to the ICC executive board on this matter shortly."
The ICC has been linked with a move from Dubai on a couple of previous occasions, with the former England & Wales Cricket Board (and Glamorgan) president David Morgan heading a six-man panel that considered a return to Lord's in 2009, when Mumbai was also mooted. Singapore missed out to Dubai when the decision was made to leave Lord's in 2005 and, like Colombo, would recognise the new power-base of the global game in Asia.
However, Cardiff has emerged as a more cost-effective British option than Lord's. It was one of three host cities for the ICC's Champions Trophy last summer, largely due to financial support from the Welsh government, which would almost certainly be forthcoming in an effort to secure a permanent ICC presence in Cardiff.
Reaction to the more contentious aspects of the F&CA's proposals – notably the creation of a new four-man executive committee on which England, India and Australia would be permanent members, and the exemption of the same three countries from relegation under a new two-tier system for Test cricket – has been mostly hostile.
Giles Clarke, the ECB's chairman who also chairs the F&CA, and his major allies – Wally Edwards of Cricket Australia and N Srinivasan of the Board of Control for Cricket in India – will not have been remotely surprised by that. But the key for them will be how the numbers stack up when their paper is considered at the quarterly meeting of the ICC board on 28-29 January.
If the alternative, as has been suggested, is India walking away from the ICC, then the other seven full members may regard proposals that bind India to a four-man executive committee and maintain some, admittedly reduced, financial guarantees – including the establishment of a new Test Match Fund to support loss-making five-day cricket – more sympathetically than most in the media.
Martin Snedden, a member of the New Zealand Cricket Board, provided a first hint of the lesser nations' priorities when he conceded that a desire for India to secure a greater share of the revenue for which they are largely responsible is "not unreasonable" but stressed the importance of at least maintaining the current future tours programme, which runs until 2020.
"Do we have power at the ICC table?" Snedden asked in Wellington's Dominion Post, rhetorically. "Not a hell of a lot. Do we have an ability to influence and persuade? A little bit.
"The critical thing that [we] have to do is identify those things that are most critical to us and try and ensure we secure the stability of a playing programme and the stability of revenue that we need."
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