Indian cricket on the field may be stronger than ever before and looking forward to making waves on shores where they have mostly floundered, but off it the cricket administration is as messy as ever before. It has been more than a year now, when the SC ordered the implementation of the Justice RM Lodha recommendations, yet a resolution seems nowhere in sight.
It does appear that no one seems to be showing any interest in clearing this logjam. Unfortunate and disturbing as it may appear, the fact of the matter is that all parties are happy with the present state of affairs. The Board officials have yet to make any substantial move to get the reforms implemented, the Committee of Administrators, headed by Vinod Rai, are more than happy remaining the king-makers and the Supreme Court is in no hurry to call the bluff.
A stage has been reached where even those who have been strong backers of former Chief Justice Thakur’s judgment of ordering implementation of the Lodha reforms in toto are now wondering what purpose has it served. It has only created many power centers, leading to confusion without any clarity. The man who formulated these reforms, another former Supreme Court Chief Justice RM Lodha has at every opportunity expressed his disgust at how things have panned out. The courts are dragging their feet and the CoA is behaving as if it is the Board and is more busy in administrative functioning than getting the reforms implemented.
The lure of power sucks the best into it tentacles and who in India today won’t want to preside over an empire called the Board of Cricket in India. The CoA may justify its actions by saying that they are chained by whatever orders they get from the Supreme Court. And the Court in its wisdom keeps on extending its hearings, getting sucked into objections that one has been hearing ever since the case began.
Last week the head of the Board’s anti-corruption unit (ACU), former Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar questioned the very commitment of the CoA and the Board in ridding the game of corruption. In a scathing letter to the Chief Operating Officer, Rahul Johri, Neeraj Kumar mentioned a few disturbing facts which pointed out to how woefully inadequate is the ACU in dealing with corruption and other related matters. It is understaffed, just three persons run the show, and lacks resources to confront the mafia that controls the illegal betting trade in the sub-continent.
It is a poor reflection of priorities that the CoA has that it has paid little heed to streamlining its ACU, given the fact that the clamour for reforms stemmed from alleged cover-up by BCCI over fixing allegations in IPL.No wonder that one of the key members of the CoA, historian Ramchandra Guha quit a few months back in disgust. Guha realised that the cricket Board is a den of intrigue and unless those appointed to clean up the system focus on core issues and not on administrative routine, this whole exercise could end up in a disaster. Guha, instead of getting tarred by cricket politics, did what any man of integrity would have done. He put in his papers.
It is still not too late for the other members to now do the same and tell the court in its next hearing that they are unable to get the Board to implement a set of far-reaching and progressive reforms. In the absence of any urgency being shown by the stake-holders, and that includes the Supreme Court as well, it almost seems that this new status quo suits everyone and is going to be the norm. This is not what one had bargained for. One almost feels sorry for a couple of top Board officials who were forced to quit their posts by the courts.