The Bermuda cricket team’s continued decline has finally caught up with Neil Speight.

Speight, the Bermuda Cricket Board’s chief executive, represented the Associate nations on the ICC Board, until yesterday.

At the International Cricket Council’s week-long annual conference in Edinburgh, Speight lost a vote to retain his place on the ICC Board at a meeting of Associate members.

He will be replaced by Ross McCollum, from Cricket Ireland, with the two other Associate representatives, Imran Khawaja, of Singapore, and Francois Erasmus, of Namibia, retaining their posts.

With Bermuda plummeting down the world rankings the island’s influence at the Associate level has also dropped considerably, rendering Speight a largely irrelevant figure within the game.

McCollum, in contrast, represents a nation on the rise and with a 12-team Test structure and 13-team one-day international league likely to be approved later this week, the need to have a representative from the top Associate nations was paramount.

The removal of Speight comes just before the Associate representatives are handed full voting rights on the ICC Board.

Shashank Manohar, the ICC chairman, reportedly made the announcement at yesterday’s meeting, with the proposal likely to be ratified later this week. If it passes the Associates would have a strong voice when it comes to decision-making about the future of the game.

“Everything we’re hearing from the ICC chairman really does point towards a new era in ICC governance and the structures behind that,” Tim Cutler, the Hong Kong Cricket Association chief executive, told ESPNcricinfo.

“We talk about one man, one vote, are we going to have a 105-member federation with votes? Highly unlikely in the short term, but if we do get to a point where the three Associate directors have a vote each, that really does shift the paradigm that was the ICC board and really moving things in the right direction where emerging nations really do have a true voice at the top table.”