Indignation in BCCI circles but also a sense things could have been handled better

Once the Supreme Court made the Justice Lodha Committee’s “Reforms in Cricket” binding upon the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) by its judgement to a public interest litigation (PIL) on July 18, the policy-makers and those who ran the day-to-day affairs of the game realised that sooner or later they would have to make way for a new phase in Indian cricket’s administration.

Determined to bring in radical reforms, the Committee went to the extent of rewriting BCCI’s Memorandum of Association and Rules and Regulations. This shook the BCCI edifice which for almost nine decades has amended its constitution a number of times but not once thought of giving its MOA and Rules and Regulations a new look.

The apex court while giving its stamp of approval to the recommendations of the Committee not only gave the go-ahead to the committee to direct the implementation of the recommendations, but also set a time frame of four to six months to complete the reform process at the two layers of administration — BCCI and the State associations.

The SC order stated that “Since the Lodha Committee had a complete understanding of and insight into the nature of the problems sought to be remedied, but also the ability to draw timelines for taking the steps necessary for the implementation of the proposed reforms, the supervision of the transition has to be left to the committee.”

Various issues

Most administrators saw the reforms as a writing on the wall on various counts. The prevalent feeling in the Board was: 1. It would be difficult to run the sport without a minister or politician at the helm; 2. The term and tenure restrictions with a cooling off period of three years after a first three-year term will deprive an association of both administrators with a knack to deal with tricky matters and a large number of volunteers; 3. The ‘One State, One Member, One Vote’ would result in an East Zone vote bank consisting of Bengal, Jharkhand, Assam, Odisha, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim, Nagaland and Mizoram; 4. The age limit of 70 for an elected councillor would deprive young administrators of mentors; 5. With cricketers in-charge of cricket activities, there was no need for a players association and their nominees (male and female) in the apex council.

Further, those in cricket administration circles held that while there have been cases of large projects being completed by deploying BCCI subvention money, several local associations benefited from the presence of a minister, politician or bureaucrat at the top.

No introspection

There is also a sense in certain sections of the BCCI that there wasn’t meaningful introspection in recent meetings.

A very senior administrator said: “The leadership decided to challenge the recommendations in the court. The confronted the Committee and Court. They were advised to meet the Lodha Committee members in January itself and explain the difficulties. They did not. They did not set right things at Jammu & Kashmir, Goa, Hyderabad, Assam, Delhi and a few more associations.”

The BCCI has convened an Emergent-SGM on Friday and thereafter it has a week before it conveys its reply to the Lodha Committee’s status report filed on Wednesday. But whatever decision the BCCI takes, one thing is clear: come New Year, cricket administration is all set to change.