Indian cricket has never been in such good health, financially as well as performance-wise. It has a bank balance that would be the envy of big corporates. The players, especially those in the top tier, make enormous amounts of money and the national team is among the best in the world. It is a good time to be an Indian cricket fan and there is much to be admired in the manner Virat Kohli and his men play cricket, especially Tests and that too, at home.
In any establishment where results are being delivered and there is promise of things getting better, the administrative set-up that has created such a robust edifice, needs to be complimented. Ironically, that is not the case in India. Though everyone acknowledges that systems have been put in place that have allowed cricket to be run in a professional manner, there have been serious failures that have cast a shadow over the motives of the administrators, leading to the Supreme Court intervention in 2016.
The fixing and betting allegations in the IPL, where the then BCCI president’s son-in-law was an accused, the subsequent cover-up and final adjudication led to the board being literally disbanded till it was reconstituted according to a new constitution drafted by three judges of the Supreme Court headed by a former chief justice, RM Lodha.
The Indian board, that is now a multi-million industry, needed more professional, transparent and ethical governance so that it did not find itself being manipulated by a few greedy men out to exploit loopholes in the constitution for personal promotion. That’s exactly what the Lodha panel did, creating a template that divested individual control, limited their powers and created a more broad-based structure, where a coterie could not rule in perpetuity.
Even after much dilution and blatant misuse of its provisions, a new board has been finally set up which still retains some of the basic clauses of the Lodha recommendations, like the cap on age, tenure, the cooling-off period, conflict of interest and the collective powers of the nine-member Apex Council. Unfortunately, in the very first annual general body meeting convened by the new dispensation, the office-bearers want to amend the new constitution and wrest back control from the collective.
They want to reduce the importance of the Apex Council, let the secretary/president, like in the past, become all-powerful, dilute the cooling-off period so that an individual has a longer tenure. And to accommodate the man, who brought much infamy to the board by protecting his son-in-law in the IPL scandal, they want to relax the 70-year age cap so that N Srinivasan can be made India’s representative in the ICC. The reason and excuse given for this and many other amendments being suggested, is that the board needs experienced people to run its affairs.
All these arguments and many more, had been placed by the board lawyers before the Supreme Court while challenging these changes. The court accepted a few and rejected most others to finally give shape to the new constitution of the BCCI.
It has been a long battle to reach a stage where, despite proxies of those who lost out on power still being in control, there are some provisions which could rein in vested interests from running amok. By trying to do away with even those statutory conditions, that too in the very first meeting the board is holding, shows the scant regard its members have for the Supreme Court of the country. And if these amendments are approved and the courts let it pass, it will just go to show that cricket administrators in our country are a law unto themselves.