LONDON, July 1: Fourteen years after South Africa's readmission to the International Cricket Council (ICC), the country's nominee - Percy Sonn - will head the world body. Sonn, a former United Cricket Board of South Africa chief, named vice-president on Thursday and will succeed Ehsan Mani next June.

In fact, Sonn is going to occupy the No 1 seat at a time when relations between Africa and Asia will be on an upswing. After all, in one of his first acts as head of Asian Cricket Council ACC, Jagmohan Dalmiya proposed the setting up of an Afro-Asian Council in partnership with African Cricket Association ACA.

Dalmiya, Board of Control for Cricket in India supremo, took charge on Wednesday. Incidentally, Zimbabwe Cricket Union chairman Peter Chingoka is ACA boss. "The modalities are going to be worked out.

Personally, I think exciting times are ahead for Asian and African cricket," Dalmiya said. More important, within ICC, bargaining power of both continents will increase appreciably.

As it is, Asia and Africa provide six of ten full (Test) members: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, South Africa and Zimbabwe. ACC chief executive Ashraful Haq informed memorandum of understanding is going to be signed between the Asian body and ACA.

Once the signing is over, each continent may nominate a couple of officials to serve on a course-charting joint committee. ACC was founded two decades ago, but African body (registered in Johannesburg) has been in existence for just a few years.

Ashraful Haq said: "There will be an exchange at different levels, the sharing of academies and such like. Moreover, to raise funds for less developed cricket nations, we could have a series of Asian XI versus African XI limited-overs games.

"It's possible, of course, that ICC is going to be approached for bestowing official status - that will specially come in handy for marketing the series". Meanwhile, ACC's commercial arm (Asian Cricket Foundation) has been disbanded. The foundation was chaired by Dalmiya and, for next two years, parent body itself is going to be headed by the marketing wizard. -Agencies