Former England captain Michael Atherton has hit out at plans to restructure the International Cricket Council (ICC), saying the proposals recalled a time when the governing body was known as the “Imperial Cricket Conference.”

In his column for the Times, Atherton advised those at the helm of affairs to take guidance from the 2012 Woolf Report, ICC's independent governance review, which proposed sweeping changes to the way the game of cricket was being run. Most importantly, it called for the ICC’s executive board to be independent and free from the clutches of the ‘bigger nations’. A year later, it turns out, BCCI, Cricket Australia and ECB or the ‘Big three’, as they are being referred to, are ramping up pressure on the ICC to give them complete control of the way things should operate.

“It is an ideal, of course, that has never been grounded in any kind of reality under the guise of the ICC, but if you cannot be idealistic about sport, what can you be idealistic about?” Atherton wrote.

“The tone of the proposal is so arrogant and high-handed as to recall an earlier age when the organisation began as the Imperial Cricket Conference,” he added.

The former England skipper was also critical of the way the ICC was being run and was of the opinion that the current scenario was inevitable.

“Politics, race and personalities interfere with decision-making at every turn. Incompetence is a given; at a recent ICC meeting, I was told of one director who took to snoring through an anti-corruption presentation.”

Atherton also advised the powerful BCCI to “become a fully engaged and interested party to world cricket.”