COMMUNICATION is a major drawback with BCCI.
They do not communicate with their key stakeholders in the game. Leave that, they do not know who their key stakeholders are!
Their whole plan in communication is to issue terse one line press releases, which is almost old school style, something that is not followed even by the non-Test playing countries.
Communication for BCCI means, issuing a tender in newspapers. That coincidentally is also marketing for them. So at best, marketing and communications for BCCI is about issuing tenders and one line press releases.
This is where the problem with BCCI starts and this is where it ends.
BCCI believes it does a lot of good work and that it is not appreciated enough. But what it does not do, is to show what kind of good work it does.
They have one full-time media manager, who has his hands tied. A) because he is not a mediaperson and does not understand how media functions, B) Because he has no power.
At best, the only job being done by him is to coordinate with other Boards for accreditations or to streamline accreditation for home series. That apart, he has no role. It is a pity that a multi-billion dollar BCCI does not believe in communicating on any issue. Even the issue of a new sponsor for the Champions League Twenty20 or any new decision is a press release issued from the south of the Vindhyas.
There is no one point of contact who will disseminate information. The ones who can or should speak, don’t want to speak. And the ones who should not, speak all the time.
Now you figure who is who.
The England and Wales Cricket Board or Cricket Australia does not have their chief executive on the phone talking to individual journalists, The chief executive or the Board chairman is the last point of contact. But in India it is the other way around.
IPL employed an external agency for the first three years for its communications. But once the regime changed, you had three outsiders being employed as media managers for the IPL edition staged this year.
So with such a backgrounder if you have Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar attempting to articulate a point of view which is closer to BCCI’s, are they doing anything wrong?
If anything, it shows an attempt by the BCCI to correct an impression surrounding them.
The outrage is also misplaced because the fire was lit because of lack of knowledge on how television functions. And also because most don’t understand that BCCI is the host broadcaster and by that definition also the producer. So this way it controls the concept of appointing commentators.
Just a final thought, if Gavaskar and Shastri are indeed BCCI agents, why did the media not have any issue back in 2008 during the Monkeygate drama?
Gavaskar and Shastri were already roped in as IPL governing council members at the time. But that did not matter in any way as the media piggybacked on the duo’s stinging attack on the Aussies. That led to a sense of outrage all over the country.
So where was the conflict of interest back then?
Obviously it is all a matter of convenience as it is with every other issue in Indian cricket.
Introducing a new column from an Industry Veteran who chooses to remain anonymous for reasons that it would compromise his corporate position if he were to reveal his identity. The only remit that SportzPower has given The Insider is this – that the commentary should have no compromise on fact and that the effort should be directed towards the betterment of sport and the institutions that represent sport.
