ANIL Kumble made a telling comment this past week.
“One will have to be like Gandhi if we don’t bother about our livelihood,’’ said Kumble as a fire seemingly raged around him.
It is a telling statement and one which should shake up India’s sporting establishment.
But sadly it won’t and as always it will be much ado about nothing.
Kumble’s alleged conflict of interest for running a company and also managing the players from his state came to light this past week.
It threw up several uncomfortable questions. But nothing more than what was Kumble’s reasoning for running the company.
He said in no uncertain terms that his work at Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) and National Cricket Academy (NCA) are honorary in nature.
Instead of attacking Kumble’s conflict of interest, should this not be an excellent opportunity to hit at the root cause of India’s sporting, including cricketing, woes.
This honorary culture where sport is run in an archaic way with posts which have long been abolished in every other corner of the world, except India, is the root cause of all the troubles.
As seen in the case of CWG 2010, the root cause was this honorary set-up. Look at CWG 2014, it is run by a public-private company with a board of directors answerable for every decision. Below the board of directors is a management team which executes the decisions.
That’s the structure that every sporting organisation, especially cricket, needs to adopt in India. Instead of what happens where everybody gets trapped in the conflict of interest argument.
Would Kumble have dared to do this if he was drawing a handsome salary and if he was being paid to do his jobs. Doing it for the love of the game is too 1930s. This is 2011 and this is a time for everyone being rewarded for their effort.
Can you imagine someone like Kumble with his undivided attention at the NCA and KSCA, what a difference it would make? Instead we have Kumble, worried as any man should be, about his livelihood.
It is only fair that Kumble looks for opportunities to earn some moolah. After all, he cannot survive on earnings from cricketing days forever.
But throwing up this suggestion again and again in front of a BCCI which has about 10 paid employees is an exercise in futility. The one sector where people want to be a part of its set-up – the IPL governing council – has also undergone a change. It too is now an honorary set-up.
What happens in a honorary set-up is that people change hats but stay in the same organisation. Look at Niranjan Shah for example. He has been secretary, is now vice-president for two years. The next job he is angling for is that of treasurer.
It is like musical chairs and when the song stops, everyone takes their appointed seats. This is a far cry from what a modern, sporting corporation should be.
Instead we have a feudal, almost old Soviet-type Iron Curtain scenario where decisions are taken behind closed doors with information being provided by way of leaks.
Since it is all for the “love of the game”, TA/DA earned by attending meetings becomes the biggest source of income. The number of meetings in a year goes up, but productivity remains zilch.
Instead of curbing unnecessary expenditure this way and remunerating people for the services they render, Indian cricket and sport always chooses the tougher, but of course “more honorary”, path.
Hockey India (HI) has a CEO hired from overseas with a small staff reporting to her. But internal politics will ensure that the honorary “lovers of the sport” will end up overpowering her.
Instead of looking to bring this crucial change in sporting administration, Sports Minister Ajay Maken is dragging his feet on dead wood like electoral reforms for an archaic system.
BCCI has its good points. There is nothing really wrong in having Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri on its rolls. What BCCI does is have a control on its production and thereby controls the messaging from all its properties viz cricket matches.
That is the best any company can do, control the messaging through its best paid spokespersons. There is nothing to be squeamish about it, but the BCCI chooses to speak in hushed tones in response.
Every company which is listed hires a PR agency to run its campaigns, why is BCCI fighting shy of admitting it. Can you imagine having a commentator in a BCCI production, saying that India is a big bully in world cricket?
Can anyone sit in office and abuse his/her own employer? Where is freedom of speech then?
BCCI can get out of this media created tight spots by just coming out all guns blazing. Instead it chooses to run away from a debate giving rise to doubts.
Then there is the conflict of interest being debated in the Supreme Court, that of N Srinivasan also being the Chennai Super Kings owner. There again, Srinivasan came on television and clarified that he is a major shareholder but does not own CSK. Instead of relying on semantics and playing with words, would it not have been better to just not clarify?
What this “clarification” has done is bring further ridicule on the BCCI for bending the rules for one person.
Then finally, there are murmurs around MS Dhoni’s management also handling players in the national ODI and Test squads.
What is forgotten is that in the case of Dhoni’s friend RP Singh, he was out of the reckoning for two years and is certain to be out for a longer period now.
If a player does not perform there is only that much that such friendships can help. By being a closed shop and not letting selectors explain their decisions, the BCCI is further letting this talk around the team fester.
This creates bad blood within the set-up and there is bound to be insecurity among the younger, newer players on which side to align with.
In the absence of proper guidance, these players will get wrong advice and end up making horrid choices.
Thankfully, India has the likes of Kumble to mentor these players. But the BCCI has chosen to shelve a project to let Kumble mentor the younger lot.
Instead of handpicking and paying Kumble to shepherd the next generation, the BCCI has backed down.
We therefore come back to where we started. Is Kumble wrong in saying he is not Gandhi and has a family to look after? Not at all.
The biggest irony however, is that this is the same Kumble who fought for seven years with the BCCI to get central contracts for national players to be introduced as a measure of security.
Today, the same Kumble is facing questions about securing a source of income for himself.
LAST WORD: It almost seems as if there is a sudden co-ordinated attack on the issue of conflict of interest. As soon it appears in one magazine, it is immediately in a newspaper which picks it up and goes to town about it. It has happened twice in two months. If this is not a planned assault, then what is?
