NEW DELHI: The BCCI is doing its best to save the Ferozeshah Kotla cricket ground from an ICC ban. And given BCCI’s clout, financial muscle or call it what you will, it is quite likely that match-referee Alan Hurst’s report of “unfit” will be toned down to “poor” and the Kotla will escape with a monetary fine.
But, actually, the Kotla deserves to be banned. Not too long ago, the whole stadium was unfit in all respects. There was a Kotla I and a Kotla II. A lot of records were made by league batsmen on Kotla II because it was actually not a ground but, in fact, a small park.
And Kotla I… well it was a shame really that the country’s capital had such a shoddy ground where Test matches were played.
Both these structures were subsequently razed and a biggish ground has come up in its place. The ground has been rebuilt but the culture (or lack of it) at the DDCA remains the same. Everybody seems to blame everybody else, passing the buck has not stopped at all, players (both current and former) are far from united and the office bearers … well the less said about them the better.
Whatever the ICC might decide (and it’s likely to decide in BCCI’s favour), the fact is that the Kotla does not deserve to be an international venue.
So, what led to the latest debacle? Some matches of the Champions League were played on this very ground and the bounce was really low. So BCCI’s chief curator Daljit Singh decided to do something about the bounce. Daljit decided (in his wisdom) that new grass would give the track more bounce.
He consulted Delhi Golf Club’s Pradeep Gupta in this regard, who, in turn, suggested a variety of grass that was procured from the Rajghat area of the Capital and was put up on the pitch. But that did not help matters (this grass was meant to grow horizontally but started growing vertically instead, or perhaps the other way around. Whatever happened, it didn’t help at all).
Even before the start of the final one-dayer versus Sri Lanka, Daljit and Co. were not entirely convinced with the state of the pitch but decided to take a chance and the move backfired in a big way.
In fact, Venkat Sundaram (BCCI’s chief curator before Daljit Singh) says that the pitch was actually unfit for the match. “It was an experiment that went horribly wrong,” says Sundaram.
DDCA sports secretary Sunil Dev says he is not to be blamed at all. “Whatever Daljit wanted we gave him. We were going exactly by his advise,” says Sunil Dev. Mohali-based Daljit was reportedly getting Rs 50,000 per visit to the Kotla from the DDCA and he made many such visits to oversee the preparations. Vijay Bahadur Misra was only the caretaker of the pitch. All the instructions were given by Daljit.
Seeing the lack of bounce in the pitch for the Champions League matches, Daljit wanted to give it more bounce. But it will not be wrong to say that in his attempt to make the pitch bouncy, Daljit goofed-up big time. And now the BCCI is having to do damage control.
In the meantime, DDCA has appointed Radhey Shyam (who owes his allegiance to Subhania Club and was the curator of the Kotla pitch before Daljit stepped in) as the interim curator. Some feel, though eccentric, Radhey Shyam is a much better curator than Daljit.
This fiasco has given disgruntled cricketers of the capital the ideal opportunity to gun for DDCA officials. All these former players (Bishen Bedi, Kirti Azad, Madan Lal, Vivek Razdan, etc), who are now criticising the DDCA, have all been part of its nefarious functioning in the past in some capacity or the other. And now they want a new role in the DDCA.
These former players are demanding that Arun Jaitley should set up a cricket improvement committee (CIC) at the DDCA and should abolish the sports committee or at least curtail its powers. These players will be meeting the DDCA president in the coming days to decide on the matter.
The CIC might be a good idea but first these former players have to be united. They all have their own agendas and have never agreed on anything in the past. The sports committee should actually only be conducting the DDCA league but has become so powerful because these former players do not trust each other at all.
The BCCI can use its muscle and save the Kotla from a ban. But the Board cannot save the DDCA from the internecine politics that have now become the norm at the Kotla. That norm is here to stay.
