The BCCI had it coming. This was comeuppance for all the disdain shown towards niceties like ethics in governance and a sense of morality. The sheer arrogance of money seemed to hide all the good qualities shown like sharing some of the gravy with all those retired players who had served the game in times when there was so little money in the game. It was BCCI’s karma that it had to run into the Justice Lodha committee, ordered into action because the board simply kept defying the top court thanks to one top official’s obsession with his post at the cost of everything else.
Even kings must be called to order was the message. From the mood of the three gentlemen, who formed the high-power committee in a conference room that seemed more like a parliament of people rather than an inquisition chamber, it was pretty clear they were determined to act in the interest of the game. This was no cosmetic exercise ordered by manipulation of even the topmost judiciary, which Jagmohan Dalmiya managed with the Justice Chandrachud commission a couple of decades ago. The panel members were so open to suggestions and so keen to gather opinion from people who have been associated with the game that the present orders on reformation of BCCI was a given.
“Their lordships” made those who were invited to depose feel at home in an open atmosphere of idea sharing on the shocking state of the BCCI, reduced thus to a state in which it seemed to care only for the money it had made and for the officials who made it appear as if anything they did for the constituency of cricket was a favour to someone rather than a job they did in return for the sacred trust placed in them to work for the betterment of the game. It is only right then that those who mocked the very society which elevated them should have to take a walk now, rendered ineligible to hold office thanks to the strict conditions laid down.
The democratisation of BCCI is what is being attempted. The ‘one state, one vote; rule would affect the West Zone states the most. The eligibility rules will also hit a couple of old admin men from the west, but so too would Tamil Nadu lose its strongman of cricket, his monopoly power razed because the most problems crept up in his regime and the only answer seemed to be more and more litigation and an open defiance of top court recommendations about keeping off BCCI meetings.
There is no place in cricket for the Sepp Blatter type of ‘disloyalty payments’ to all supporters practised as a means to control the board’s voters. Nor should the allotment of matches to venues be manipulated in such a way as to favour voters. BCCI’s top brass have been guilty of these practices for decades, which is why the need to professionally run the board has become such a top priority. The present lot in the board have also been so patently guilty of manipulating the allotment of matches in the T20 worlds.
A CEO would be able to commander a chart of allotments and ensure equitable distribution of matches across the nearly 50 venues of international cricket in India. If office-bearers are incapable of anything other than subjective judgments and actions, it is clear the power should be taken away from them, which is where the Lodha panel recommendations come in. Cricket in India and its image has no better opportunity than now as the BCCI can clean up its act and become a professional organisation with as much money at its command. All it needs is gumption and an overall sense of humility because it is the game that is great, not its administrators, as we learnt enough from the Blatter experience to know this as gospel truth.
