MUMBAI: The Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) has proposed a relook of the present stipulation that the likes of India coach Ravi Shastri and India ‘A’ and U-19 coach Rahul Dravid are barred from having any role to play in the IPL on the valid and justified grounds of potential conflict of interest.
The BCCI is flabbergasted with the move since it contradicts the recommendation made by the Lodha committee of contracted coachesnot having any conflict of interest when it comes to their roles in the national teams and the IPL, Cricketnext reports. It was due to this rule that Dravid had to step down as the mentor of Delhi Daredevils this season and Shastri wasn’t in the commentary box.
As a senior BCCI official member told Cricketnext: “COA’s decision to take a relook at the conflict of interest rules in order to consider allowing Shastri and Dravid to commentate in the IPL is yet another evidence of their capricious conduct. They have not been honest to their job and have looked at everything through the prism of bias and as a result, though they are supervising the administration of the BCCI, their thinking is adversarial to the board and this reeks of dishonesty in their actions.
“A prime example is their suo moto decision to disallow those disqualified from being office bearers to participate in even committee meetings of the BCCI while specifically asking N Ram to be a part of the committee even though he is above 70 and disqualified to be an office bearer. Additionally, nothing can be more hypocritical than Vinod Rai chairing the CoA meeting despite having turned a sweet 70 while himself having spared no effort to disallow everyone else who is a shade over 70. This is like the behaviour of the child who wants to bat twice merely because he owns the bat.”
