Who is running Indian cricket? Some of the names: N Srinivasan, Niranjan Shah, Rajiv Shukla…
Who are the people disqualified by the Supreme Court from running Indian cricket? Some of the names: N Srinivasan, Niranjan Shah, Rajiv Shukla…
When the good guys (Supreme Court, Lodha Committee, Committee of Administrators) do not speak in one strong voice, the other side (the long-serving officials) interprets the cracks in communication to their advantage. There was the business of nine years in total that an official was allowed to serve. Then it was clarified: it would be nine at the State-level and another nine at the National, making for 18 in all.
The question of whether a CEO (or a patron or any other fancy title) is part of “office-bearers” within the meaning of the Court’s ruling might cause a non-elected official to continue to wield power.
And now the CoA is recommending a fresh look at a couple of the more contentious rulings: the one-State-one-vote which gives some associations including Mumbai a vote only once in three years (in some cases it is two), and having five national selectors instead of the three as recommended by the Lodha Committee.
Nothing may come of these, but the fact that there is an attempt to hold out olive branches to a national sports body which has been dragging its feet in following the Supreme Court’s rulings is significant.
All this might be rendered moot before the year is out if the Parliament passes the Sports Bill which, miraculously, might not have the age-limit (70 years) for office-bearers, or cooling off periods.
It will then be a strange case of back to the future — everything going on as before, officials back in their chairs officially, and four years of time, effort and money down the drain.
The CoA, appointed to oversee the transition from the old BCCI to the new one, may have been unduly soft and gentlemanly, when the situation called for tough measures without any wiggle room.
Officials, both elected and appointed, have used the uncertainty to their own advantage, complaining here of not having enough money to pay junior cricketers, there of being short of funds to run the daily business.
This is a good time to put systems in place, to ensure that institutions like the National Cricket Academy are never affected by cricket politics at any time, that the support staff are given contracts well in advance so they can plan their immediate future.
The contracts of Sanjay Bangar and Sridhar expired on March 31, but these haven’t been renewed even as the Indian team prepares to leave for the Champions Trophy in England.
That the likes of Shah, Shukla and Srinivasan (via Skype from England) were allowed to attend the general body meeting suggests a lack of understanding of the extent to which Indian officials can break rules, both legal and moral, and hang on till they are expressly told by the highest court in the land not to do so.
They were not expressly told not to in this case, and therefore didn’t see the need to keep away despite the fact that technically they could not be office-bearers in their respective associations.
The good guys might lay down the rules, but the opposition knows all the loopholes.
The BCCI’s gradual return to “normalcy” (meaning, the “good old days” before the CoA or Lodha Committee or Mudgal Committee or the Supreme Court) is worrying. Perhaps it saw the post-Lodha period as one of merely minor irritation — a break for a few months — before its return to power.
If India come off second best in the negotiations with the ICC before the final vote on both money sharing and governance next month, then the old lot would have strengthened their case for a return to such “normalcy”.
The decision to eschew blackmail and send the national team to the Champions Trophy was sensible. The CoA advising the BCCI members on the eve of the general body had something to do with that. Even a nay-sayer like Shah turned yea-sayer overnight.
Anand Jaiswal, the Vidarbha Cricket Association president, was quoted as saying, “The reason why (we) decided unanimously was the CoA’s explanation of the matter. They described clearly what we stand to gain and lose. Before that, members had been misled on certain crucial points. Once they realised that, this was not a difficult decision.”
What is disturbing here is that grown men, dedicated to serving the game, have to be told right from wrong on important issues. Lodha should have insisted on an Ethics Committee for the board.
There are two kinds of normalcy ahead — one as defined by the BCCI, and the other by the Supreme Court. It seems more effort has gone towards the first than the second.
