The chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board is to become the next head of the game's world governing body, the BBC understands.
Welshman David Morgan will take over from acting International Cricket Council president Ray Mali next year.
There had been a stand-off over whether Morgan or India's Sharad Pawar should take over the top job.
But BBC sport editor Mihir Bose said a compromise would see Morgan in charge until 2010, with Pawar succeeding him.
606: DEBATE
"Both of them will become vice-president, in effect president elect," Bose told Five Live.
ICC officials are currently in London for a series of meetings ahead of the council's annual conference in the Long Room at Lord's on Friday.
And a formal announcement of the Morgan-Pawar decision is expected later in the week.
Morgan, 69, has been ECB chairman since January 2003, having previously held a similar role with county side Glamorgan following a career in the steel industry.
When elected to succeed Lord MacLaurin, he was seen as a safe pair of hands and has certainly been a conciliatory figure for most of his time in charge.
But he has not always been able to avoid controversy, attracting criticism for his handling of England's 2004 tour to Zimbabwe and for approving the sale of live TV rights to BSkyB in a £220m deal which runs until the end of the 2009 season.
And the impasse over whether he or Pawar should become ICC president has lasted since February when a nominations committee was unable to agree whose name to put forward.
It prompted a decision to extend then president Percy Sonn's term of office by a year until 2009.
But when Mali was appointed following Sonn's death in May, the search for a compromise was stepped up with a view to a permanent replacement taking over next year.
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