TWO YEARS and eight months after the Supreme Court nominated a four-member Committee of Administrators (which soon became a two-person one) to oversee and professionalise the functioning of the world’s richest cricket body, Vinod Rai, the chairman of the CoA throughout this period, is ready to demit office.
And what have those 32 months achieved? 11 status reports for one. As for the rest of it, nothing worth wasting words over. “Same old, same old” would sum it up well.
For the record, the BCCI is to hold its elections on October 22. But who will hold which post has already been decided so why the need for an election? No need but the motions have to be gone through.
The nomination of Sourav Ganguly as the next president of the BCCI may make for good optics, but the fact that it was the endorsement of the second most powerful man in India today – Union Home Minister Amit Shah – that ensured the former India captain’s candidacy would sail through, severely limits Ganguly’s options on the “positive change” front.
Enough has already written about the fact Shah’s son Jay is set to be BCCI secretary, while Arun Singh Dhumal, brother of Minister of State and former board president Anurag Thakur, will be the treasurer.
Add the fact that Ganguly’s elevation WILL end up being ineffectual and merely symbolic because he will be demitting office within a mere nine months, can’t be wished away.
The ideal of cricketers running the BCCI by hiring professional managers – as is the case with the likes of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and Cricket Australia (CA) – holds zero interest for the Indian cricket board’s mandarins.
Keeping this ground reality in mind, recent comments around the agenda Ganguly has laid out for the nine months he will be president is worth examining.
Credit New Indian Express for providing relevant ‘Dada speak’ bytes.
Drive to rebuild image
“BCCI has not been in greatest of position for the last three years. Its image has got tarnished. It’s a great opportunity for me to do something good. In the next few months, we can put everything in place and bring back normalcy in India again.”
The operative word is normalcy. For Ganguly, normalcy is pre-CoA. Or as noted earlier: “Same old, same old.”
First-class first priority
“We will speak to everyone but my biggest priority will be to look after first-class cricketers. I had requested the CoA but they didn’t listen. That’s the first thing I will do, look after the financial health of first-class cricketers. Their remuneration needs to be increased manifold.”
Will Ganguly walk the talk on this. Let’s just say we’re not entirely convinced. But expect there will be some cosmetic upstick.
Conflict of interest
“I am not sure whether we will get the services of the best cricketers in the system, because they will have other options to avail. Because if they come into the system and not get to do what is their livelihood, it is difficult for them to be part of this system. This needs to be sorted as it is another very serious issue.”
Conflict of interest? What’s that.
Regaining position in ICC
“That’s one area we will have to take care of, because in the last 3-4 years, we have not received the kind of money we deserve. India generates 75-80% per cent of global cricket revenue, so that’s going to be one of the big agendas.”
He’s faithfully parroting N Srinivasan’s agenda here, we-thinks. So what will it be? Nine months of tom-tomming some illusary injustice done to the richest and most powerful cricketing body on the planet? Go for it by all means. Barring India, the game is in any case fast deteriorating in quality of competition and on its way to increasing irrelevance across the cricketing world, so if the BCCI can accelerate that process for short term gains and ego boosts, there will be enough media cheerleaders to sing along.
Now that the die is cast on how the BCCI will be run (which is essentially old wine in old bottles) it is pertinent to hark back to what was the central objective of the Lodha Committee reforms: To professionalise the management of cricket in India.
In the results column, it is safe to say that the CoA, which was mandated to oversee the process these past 32 months, has failed miserably in its mission.
