There is something rotten in the state of Delhi cricket. There always has been. If Hercules cleaned the Augean Stables by diverting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus, Kirti Azad is attempting to clean the DDCA (Delhi and District Cricket Association) by focusing both public attention and political power on it. A few decades ago, he was a promising cricketer when Bishan Bedi led the first clean up. He backed Bedi then; Bedi is backing him now. The rot in the DDCA is deep and institutionalised. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a rate card for bribes.
There are lessons here for other associations with similar afflictions. It is important to keep the focus on the cricket, however. The rest — the politics, the legalities, the personality clashes, the grandstanding — are all incidental. It does not matter what the Aam Aadmi Party’s motives are, nor does it matter that the highest-ranking individual under fire is the country’s finance minister. It does not matter that questions have been raised over the Delhi government ordering a Commission of Inquiry apparently without the Lieutenant-Governor’s approval. Nor does it matter that the Congress spent 900 crore renovating the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium while the DDCA spent only 114 crore for theirs. There cannot be degrees of corruption. We are less corrupt than them is no argument.
The corruption did not begin under Arun Jaitley, nor did it end when he quit as president. Back in the 1960s, then India captain Tiger Pataudi began his Ranji career with Delhi but then shifted to Hyderabad. “I realised it would be more convenient for me to change teams than to expect the Delhi officials to change their attitude,” he wrote.
In the 1970s, after he had led Delhi to their maiden Ranji titles and put North Zone on the cricketing map of India, another India captain, Bedi, was rewarded by being stripped of his captaincy. This, for daring to suggest improvements in the way cricket was run in Delhi.
Sometimes, thanks to the in-fighting, two teams, each claiming to represent Delhi, have turned up for the same Ranji Trophy match. This year, three separate lists of probables for the season were announced by three different officials.
It is easy to sympathise with the current players, the likes of Gautam Gambhir, Ishant Sharma, Virat Kohli who have been tweeting support to the ruling dispensation. Few players take a stand in their playing days; there’s too much at stake. And if Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and others didn’t then, why expect the younger lot to do so now?
Traditionally, to play cricket at the junior levels in Delhi, you had to have a godfather in the association, play for the ‘right’ club, or make up in the power and influence of your father what you may lack in talent. Corruption is indivisible. If you are a corrupt official, not above demanding money for selecting a player, then your conscience will not trouble you when it is a matter of diverting a few crores into your own pocket from sources not directly related to cricket. Like in the matter of handing out contracts, for example.
Problem of proxies Then there is the problem of proxies. No one knows who the voters in the DDCA are. Some of them may even be dead. But long-serving committee members have been voted into power by cornering the proxies, over four thousand of them. No one finds it suspicious that sometimes 50 or 60 members have the same residential address. A current vice-president has 24 DDCA members living in his house, if the addresses are to be believed.
If bogus companies were created to divert funds, if fake addresses were given, if an office-bearer was involved in round-tripping, if money was paid for non-existent work and contracts were awarded without tender, then it is of a piece with the atmosphere of corruption that has been hanging over the DDCA.
Bedi, whose battles with former president R.P. Mehra led to the first clean-up in the 1970s, says that compared to the current lot, “Mehra was an angel.”
The Indian public, quick to anger if the players have an off day on the field, are largely indifferent to the shenanigans of long-serving officials. If Mahendra Singh Dhoni fails in one innings, his house gets stoned. But if crores of rupees meant for the development of the game are siphoned away by crooked officials, there is barely a reaction.
By bringing the DDCA into national focus, therefore, Azad and Bedi have rendered cricket a signal service. The fight might be long and draining, but it is necessary. For the administration of cricket in the country, it could be a turning point. An independent probe will have ramifications beyond the DDCA and throw light on the workings of other enormously rich cricket associations.
The corrupt have remarkably similar ways of functioning.
