The State of Indian Cricket Commentary

Sanjay Manjrekar is ‘happy to apologise’ for his reinstatement in the BCCI commentary panel writes Devendra Pandey in The Indian Express

Sanjay Manjrekar (File)

Five months after he was removed from the BCCI commentary panel, former cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar has written to Board president Sourav Ganguly and other members of the Apex Council explaining his position and offering to apologise “if I have offended anyone.”

Manjrekar stated that he would be “happy to apologise” and that the sacking has “shaken my confidence” and was a “big jolt”. In this communication accessed by The Indian Express, Manjrekar noted that he was told by a BCCI official on phone that he was sacked because “some players had an issue with me as a commentator”.

The mail was a precursor to another letter the former batsman wrote to Board officials requesting his reinstatement in the commentary panel for the upcoming edition of the Indian Premier League – most likely to be held in the United Arab Emirates – and promising to abide by the regulations set by the BCCI.

“You are already in receipt of the email I sent to explain my position as commentator. With the IPL dates announced, bcci.tv will pick its commentary panel soon. I will be happy to work as per the guidelines laid by you. After all, we are working on what is essentially your production. Last time, maybe there was not enough clarity on this issue,” he wrote.

It has been speculated that Manjrekar was removed from the panel as a result of his comment calling Ravindra Jadeja a “bits-and-pieces player” during last year’s ODI World Cup and the subsequent reactions from fans and the player himself were an important trigger in him losing his job.

On July 3 last year, Jadeja had tweeted his ire at Manjrekar’s comments: “Still, I have played twice the number of matches you have played and I am still playing. Learn to respect ppl who have achieved. I have heard enough of your verbal diarrhea @Sanjaymanjrekar”.

After his half-century in the World Cup semi-final against New Zealand, Jadeja had gesticulated angrily towards the commentary studio. The official Twitter handle of the ICC posted a video of a post-match discussion involving Manjrekar. “By bits and by pieces, he just ripped me apart today. Bits of pieces of sheer brilliance, he proved me all wrong,” he had said that day.

In his first mail to Board officials, Manjrekar also flagged the perils of being a commentator in these times. “If we are not seen praising the iconic players all the time, the fans of those players tend to assume that we are antagonistic towards the players they worship … Anyone who has followed my career as a commentator would know that I have no malicious agenda against anyone and that my opinions come from a very pure place that I hold sacred. It’s cricket we are talking about, a sport that’s given me and my father so much,” Manjrekar stated. “I was greatly hurt! Especially because this came as a real shock!” he added.

Manjrekar reiterated his willingness to apologise. “So, really, this sacking for whatever reason, has shaken my confidence as a professional. If unwittingly, I have offended anyone I would be happy to apologise to the concerned party.”

Manjrekar also brought up the Jadeja issue in great detail in his email to the Apex Council, attaching an audio file of his comments. “You will see how benign it is when you hear it in right context”. He also wrote, “The player concerned obviously misunderstood this or was perhaps misinformed. By the way, the player and I have since privately made peace over this issue.”

He stated that the comment was not made during commentary but in an interview. “Please note this comment was not made by me on Twitter or in commentary, it was in an audio interview to a news agency… that got blown out of proportion. It was made as a part of a long media interview but unfortunately was made into an eye-catching headline by just one website and the player reacted sharply to it on Twitter. This got the issue the traction it did not deserve. ‘Bits-and-pieces’ is a cricketing term commonly used for cricketers who are non-specialists. It is regularly used by commentators to describe certain players and it’s never considered to be demeaning.”

In his email, Manjrekar listed out his standing as a commentator until he was “suddenly not found good enough”. “Until this moment I had been the leading commentator on the BCCI panel for many years fulfilling some of the biggest responsibilities there are in live broadcasting: lead commentator, post-match awards presenter, hosting the toss, doing player interviews and yes, impromptu BCCI functions on ground too. I am also one of the first Indian commentators that gets rostered for the World Cups by the ICC. I did my job with great pride and a 100 per cent commitment and suddenly not found to be good enough to be in the panel was a big jolt.”

Excerpts from Manjrekar’s email to BCCI

Dear esteemed members of the Apex Council,

In February 2020, completely out of the blue, I was told by Dev Shriyan, the head of production, BCCI Tv, that I was being removed from the commentary panel.

I have publicly maintained that — “the BCCI are my employers and they have every right to either have me or not, in their commentary panel. I have never considered being on a commentary panel an entitlement.”

But here, amongst a small circle of important stakeholders of Indian cricket, friends and colleagues, please allow me to open my heart.

I was greatly hurt! Especially because this came as a real shock!

I did my job with great pride and a 100 percent commitment and suddenly not found to be good enough to be in the panel was a big jolt.

Later I was told on phone by a senior office bearer that some players had an issue with me as a commentator . Now here is where our job gets a bit tricky.

If we are not seen praising the iconic players all the time, the fans of those players tend to assume that we are antagonistic towards the players they worship. That’s the professional hazard we have to live with doing our job. Anyone who has followed my career as a commentator would know that I have no malicious agenda against anyone and that my opinions come from a very pure place that I hold sacred. It’s cricket we are talking about, a sport that’s given me and my father so much.

My comments and opinions could be wrong, but they are never personal, derogatory or borne out of prejudice or cunning design, I am only biased towards excellence in performances, whether it’s a team or a player.

Now, let’s take the ‘ bits and pieces’ comment that got blown out of proportion during the last World Cup.

‘Bits and pieces’ is a cricketing term commonly used for cricketers who are non-specialists. It is regularly used by commentators to describe certain players and it’s never considered to be demeaning.

The player concerned obviously misunderstood this or was perhaps misinformed. By the way, the player and I have since privately made peace over this issue.

So, really, this sacking for whatever reason, has shaken my confidence as a professional. If unwittingly, I have offended anyone I would be happy to apologise to the concerned party.

Regards,
Sanjay

Why should we shoot ourselves in the foot by not playing Pakistan?

by Girish Menon

Tarek Fatah (a Pakistan exile and Indophile) has often lamented the lack of strategic thinking among India’s elite who are obsessed with a mercantilist (baniya in Hindi) worldview. He opined that so long as the Indian intelligentsia was preoccupied with profit and becoming CEOs, the suicide bombers of Islam will always have an edge on the Indian nation. I was reminded of this viewpoint when I heard Vinod Rai the head of BCCI (Indian cricket board) say:

“Why should we shoot ourselves in the foot by not playing (Pakistan in the cricket world cup)? We should seek their ouster and remove them from the cricketing committee.” (Indian Express 23/02/2019)

I interpret Mr. Rai as saying that ‘we (the cricket-business complex) don’t want to take any monetary losses on an issue of grave national concern.’

So what will happen if this view prevails is that there will be a lot of jingoism in the form of advertisements, flag sales etc leading to the match and the business interests will count their profits while flaunting their patriotic fervour.

The BCCI is the cricket world’s dominant body. Also, it has a force-majeure national event (Pulwama blasts) that it could use in its defence for boycotting the Pakistan game. Despite all this power, and when other Indian sports bodies have taken a stand and paid the price, the failure of BCCI to boycott the Pakistan game exposes its mercantilist nature.

This pattern of behaviour is not unique to the cricket-business complex. Some Bollywood nationalists continue to peddle their wares in Pakistan with Manikarnika still showing in Pakistan cinemas.

There could be many other business interests that continue to do business as usual with Pakistan and still stoke the fires of revenge by the military.

This also reminds me of the NIMBY (Not in my Backyard) argument. These better off nationalists do not mind ordinary Indians being sacrificed in a military conflict with Pakistan so long as their own profits from trade with Pakistan continue uninterrupted.

I too am faced with a similar dilemma. I have a student of Pakistani origin who has a crucial exam coming up soon. Should I stop my tuition and stop him from excelling in the exam just to make a point? But as a trained economist I too have come up with an ‘on the other hand argument’ which satisfies my mercantilist worldview. 

Kohli's arrogance helps his game but not the team

Ramachandra Guha in Cricinfo


Watching Virat Kohli play two exquisite square drives against Australia in March 2016, I tweeted: "There goes my boyhood hero G. R. Viswanath from my all time India XI." Those boundaries formed part of a match-winning innings of 82 in a T20 World Cup quarter-final, and they confirmed for me Kohli's cricketing greatness.

I had first been struck by how good he was when watching, at the ground, a hundred he scored in a Test in Bangalore in 2012. Against a fine New Zealand attack, Sachin Tendulkar looked utterly ordinary, whereas the man who, the previous year, had carried Tendulkar on his shoulders in tribute was totally in command. Two years later, I saw on the telly every run of his dazzling 141 in Adelaide, when, in his first Test as captain, Kohli almost carried India to a remarkable win.

The admiration had steadily accumulated. So, as he struck the miserly James Faulkner and Nathan Coulter-Nile for those two defining boundaries in that T20 match in 2016, the sentimental attachments of childhood were decisively vanquished by sporting prowess. Virender Sehwag and Sunil Gavaskar would open the batting in my fantasy XI; Rahul Dravid and Tendulkar would come next; and Kohli alone could be No. 5.

That was two years ago. Now, after the staggering series of innings he has played since - not least that magnificent 153 in India's most recent Test - I would go even further. In all formats and in all situations, Kohli might already be India's greatest ever batsman.

Their orthodoxy and classicism, which served Dravid and Gavaskar so well in the Test arena, constrained them in limited-overs cricket. Sehwag had a spectacular Test record, but his one-day career was, by his own exalted standards, rather ordinary. Tendulkar was superb, often supreme, in the first innings of a Test, but he was not entirely to be relied upon in the fourth innings, or even when batting second in the 50-overs game. Besides, being captain made Tendulkar nervous and insecure in his strokeplay. On the other hand, captaincy only reinforces Kohli's innate confidence, and of course, he is absolutely brilliant while chasing.


"No one in the entire history of the game in India has quite had Kohli's combination of cricketing greatness, personal charisma, and this extraordinary drive and ambition to win for himself and his team"

I have met Kohli only once, and am unlikely to ever meet him again. But from our single conversation, and from what I have seen of him otherwise, I would say that of all of India's great sportsmen past and present, he is the most charismatic. He is a man of a manifest intelligence (not merely cricketing) and of absolute self-assurance. Gavaskar and Dravid were as articulate as Kohli in speech, but without his charisma. Kapil and Dhoni had equally strong personalities but lacked Kohli's command of words.

I was witness to the reach and range of Kohli's dominating self in my four months in the BCCI's Committee of Administrators. The board's officials worshipped him even more than the Indian cabinet worships Narendra Modi. They deferred to him absolutely, even in matters like the Future Tours Programme or the management of the National Cricket Academy, which were not within the Indian captain's ken.

In any field in India - whether it be politics or business or academia or sport - when strength of character is combined with solidity of achievement, it leads to an individual's dominance over the institution. And the fact is that, on and off the field, Kohli is truly impressive. No one in the entire history of the game in our country has quite had his combination of cricketing greatness, personal charisma, and this extraordinary drive and ambition to win for himself and his team. The only person who came close, even remotely close, is (or was) Anil Kumble.

Kumble was, by some distance, the greatest bowler produced by India. He was a superb thinker on the game. Moreover, he was well educated, well read, and had an interest in society and politics. And he was not lacking in an awareness of his own importance, although he carried his self-belief in a Kannadiga rather than Punjabi fashion.

It may be that Kumble alone is in the Kohli league as a cricketer and character. That perhaps is why they clashed and perhaps why Kumble had to go.

But why was he replaced by someone so strikingly inferior, in character and cricketing achievement, to the team's captain? A person with no coaching experience besides? Only because, like the BCCI, the chairman of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators surrendered his liberties and his independence when confronted by the force of Kohli's personality. As did the so-called Cricket Selection Committee. Ravi Shastri was chosen over Tom Moody (and other contenders) because Vinod Rai, Tendulkar, Sourav Gangulyand VVS Laxman were intimidated by the Indian captain into subordinating the institution to the individual. The unwisdom of that decision was masked when India played at home, against weak opposition, but it can no longer be concealed.

Had the BCCI thought more about cricket than commerce, we would not have had to go into this series against South Africa without a single practice match. Had the selectors been wiser or braver, India might not have been 2-0 down now.

Some Kohli bhakts will complain at the timing of this article, written after the Indian captain played such a stupendous innings himself. But this precisely is the time to remind ourselves of how we must not allow individual greatness to shade into institutional hubris. Kohli did all he could to keep India in the game, but the power of an individual in a team game can go only so far. Had Ajinkya Rahane played both Tests, had Bhuvneshwar Kumar played this Test, had India gone two weeks earlier to South Africa instead of playing gully cricket at home with the Sri Lankans, the result might have been quite different.

The BCCI and their cheerleaders brag about India being the centre of world cricket. This may be true in monetary terms, but decidedly not in sporting terms. From my own stint in the BCCI, I reached this melancholy conclusion: that were the game better administered in India, the Indian team would never lose a series. There are ten times as many cricket-crazy Indians as there are football-mad Brazilians. The BCCI has huge cash reserves. With this demographic and financial base, India should always and perennially have been the top team in all formats of the game. If India still lost matches and series, if India still hadn't, in 70 years of trying, won a Test series in Australia (a country with about as many people as Greater Mumbai), then surely the fault lay with how the game was mismanaged in the country.

To the corruption and cronyism that has so long bedevilled Indian cricket has recently been added a third ailment: the superstar syndrome. Kohli is a great player, a great leader, but in the absence of institutional checks and balances, his team will never achieve the greatness he and his fans desire.

When, in the 1970s, India won their first Test series in the West Indies and in England, Vijay Merchant was chairman of selectors. When much later, India began winning series regularly at home, the likes of Gundappa Viswanath and Dilip Vengsarkar were chairmen of selectors. Their cricketing achievements were as substantial as that of the existing players. They had the sense to consult the captain on team selection, but also had the stature to assert their own preferences over his when required. On the other hand, the present set of selectors have all played a handful of Tests apiece. The coach, Shastri, played more, but he was never a true great, and his deference to the captain is in any case obvious.

In Indian cricket today, the selectors, coaching staff and administrators are all pygmies before Kohli. That must change. The selectors must be cricketers of real achievement (as they once were). If not great cricketers themselves, they must at least have the desire and authority to stand up to the captain. Likewise, the coach must have the wisdom and courage to, when necessary, assert his authority over Kohli's (as when Kumble picked Kuldeep Yadav, a move that decided a Test and series in India's favour). And the administrators must schedule the calendar to maximise India's chances of doing well overseas, rather than with an eye to their egos and purses. (The decision not to have an extended tour of South Africa was partly influenced by the BCCI's animosity towards Cricket South Africa.)

Only when India consistently win Tests and series in South Africa, and only when they do likewise in Australia, can they properly consider themselves world champions in cricket. They have the team, and the leader, to do it. However, the captain's authority and arrogance, so vital and important to his personal success, must be moderated and managed if it is to translate into institutional greatness.

Kohli is still only 29. He will surely lead India in South Africa again and he has more than one tour of Australia ahead of him. Two years ago he secured a firm place in my all-time India XI. My wish, hope and desire is for Kohli to end his career with him also being the captain of my XI.

The uncomfortable truth behind the mask

Suresh Menon in The Hindu

What do they know of air pollution who only air pollution know? Kipling didn’t say that, neither did C.L.R. James, nor let’s face it, did former England captain Ted Dexter. But Dexter was the first to connect air pollution in India and international cricket.

After England lost the first Test of the 1992-93 series in Kolkata, Dexter, then chairman of selectors announced grandly that he had “commissioned a report into the impact of air pollution in Indian cities.”

England lost all the Tests of that series, and the excuses varied from pollution to the players’ facial hair to prawn curry in a Chennai restaurant. But Dexter’s attempt at studying pollution is the best remembered a quarter century later.

In The Guardian, David Hopps wrote then: “Dexter will deservedly face accusations today that he is hiding behind a smogscreen, that the only air about last night was hot air, and that anybody seen choking was most likely choking with laughter.”

What innocent days those were!


No laughing matter

Pollution is no longer a laughing matter. It is real, measurable, and, in the case of Delhi, 12 to 15 times beyond safety limits.

To say that Indians handle pollution better than Sri Lankans is a foolish boast, and quite meaningless. To attach nationalism and patriotism to the manner in which Indian players don’t cough or vomit while their opponents do is ridiculous in the extreme.

The fact of the matter is, Sri Lankan players suffered, they deserve our sympathy and even an apology. Two First Class matches were called off in Delhi last year owing to the pollution; there is good reason for the Board of Control for Cricket in India to drop Delhi from its schedule during winter, especially when the pollution levels go from the merely dangerous to the hazardous.

The BCCI has been quoted as saying that next time they will check the pollution levels before giving Delhi a match. We’ll see.

Players selected for a Delhi Test in future might have to acclimatise themselves by revving a car engine in a locked garage. This is a terrible thing to say, but Delhi has been an embarrassment. Images of fielders in masks must rate as the most mortifying to emerge from an Indian sports field.

Such high levels of air pollution are dangerous; players and spectators who already have respiratory problems are badly hit. R. Ashwin, for example, suffered from asthma as a child. Bowling and fielding in these conditions could not have been ideal for him.

Yet, he carried on heroically. No Indian was likely to wear a mask on the field — they wore one off it, though — since that would have sent out a message no Indian wanted to hear. Patriotism before health is the safer option.

If Sri Lanka wore masks, that was a health statement; if the Indians had worn them, it would have been a political statement. That is not a burden cricket needs to carry.

Sri Lanka had every right to complain. The umpires and the match referee had to deal with a unique situation. The guiding principle in all such cases is simple: the health and safety of the players is paramount. Yet there were political considerations here too. Relationship between the countries, future tours, the financial implications of rubbing India the wrong way.

The BCCI president’s aggressive response was disingenuous — but then the governing body has not been known to use tact when belligerence is an alternative.


Not unintelligent

Players are grown men who are not unintelligent. Sri Lanka could not have been unaware of the strategic advantages of disrupting a game where they were being so thoroughly dominated. But we cannot assume that was their primary motivation. If Kohli missed a triple century, blame the politicians of Delhi or the farmers of Punjab. Further proof that no sport exists in isolation.

It has been argued that India play in extreme conditions in Dunedin or Manchester, so why can’t visiting teams play in polluted Delhi?

But climate is a natural phenomenon, pollution is manmade. Playing in England or New Zealand is not injurious to health.

It is true that international sportsmen must be prepared to play in all conditions — weather, pitch, outfield, audience — but you do not travel equipped to deal with pollution.

Pollution affects the Indian team too, brave front or not. If a players’ association existed (as mandated by the Supreme Court), here’s another area it might have made a difference. By definition, such an association would be focused on the players’ welfare (players, history has shown us, are not the top priority of the BCCI).

Perhaps the players and administrators lack specific knowledge of the long-term damage that air pollution can cause. That gap can be filled by a players’ association which focuses on educating the stakeholders in the game.

Sri Lankans will return to their country, the cricketing caravan will move on.

But what of those who continue to live in Delhi? Not for the first time, cricket has shone a light on man’s inhumanity to man.

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Why we inject cricket with a greater moral purpose

Suresh Menon in The Hindu

We pour into sport our highest emotions and our greatest passions because that is a way of rescuing it from meaninglessness


It is facile to say that Indians do not understand the concept of “conflict of interest”. We have had in a parliamentary panel on anti-tobacco legislation an MP known as the “beedi king of Maharashtra”. Vijay Mallya, of Kingfisher Airlines, served on the parliamentary panel on civil aviation.

It is not that we don’t understand the concept — we merely turn a blind eye to it, arguing that parliamentary panels, for instance, need “experts” in the field. Our faith in the integrity of our businessmen and politicians is touching.

Why therefore should we make such a big deal about conflicts of interest in cricket?


Undermining the spirit

The simple answer, of course, is that just because it is condoned elsewhere, it does not follow that cricket should too. It is ethically wrong, even if sometimes it is legal, as in the case of Rahul Dravid and others who are given a ten-month contract with the BCCI so they can then sign a two-month contract with an IPL team. Contracts with in-built loopholes are a testimony to the nudge-nudge, wink-wink style of the BCCI’s functioning. They go against the spirit of the game.

Many greats have played the dual game, but that doesn’t make it right. In 1956, as selector, Don Bradman picked the Australian team to England. He then wrote on the series for the Daily Mail. “He set an unusual precedent,” wrote his biographer Irving Rosenwater subtly.

In a clear-headed letter following his resignation from the Committee of Administrators, Ramachandra Guha makes a forceful point: “The BCCI management is too much in awe of the superstars to question their violation of norms and procedures. For their part, BCCI office-bearers like to enjoy discretionary powers, so that the coaches or commentators they favour are indebted to them and do not ever question their own mistakes or malpractices.”


Guha’s indictment of the system

Guha’s letter indicts the system, and if the BCCI (or the CoA, which sometimes looks and acts like the BCCI in different clothes) has the interests of the game at heart, then it will have to be acted upon. It has brought into focus another aspect of cricket corruption — the ethical one. It has taken a fan of cricket — and not just a fan of cricketers, which is what most Indians are — to point out the anomalies.

Guha has made the sensible suggestion that conflicts of interest which exist from the highest level to the lowest are best dealt with at the top, saying, “This would have a ripple effect downwards.”

So why cricket? Why should the sport — which is believed to mirror society — answer to a higher morality than other fields of human endeavour?

To understand this, one must acknowledge the essential nature of sport. It is artificial, it is in the large sense meaningless, it is “something that does not matter but is performed as if it did,” to quote Simon Barnes.

The very artificiality of sport gives us the right to inject it with a greater moral purpose than, say, business or politics. Even politicians who are otherwise known to be shady are expected to be honest on the sports field. Bill Clinton might have cheated on his wife, but had he cheated on a golf course, there would have been no redemption.

Being artificial means sport is not of the real world; the sharp practices of the real world should not be allowed to seep into sport. Thus sport cannot be a mere reflection of society, but has to belong to a higher realm, a fantasy world where everything is perfect. Or should aim to be.


Aspire for perfection

The argument here is not that cricket is perfect, but that it ought to aspire towards perfection, both on and off the field. The process is important even if the product sometimes disappoints.

We pour into sport our highest emotions and our greatest passions because that is a way of rescuing it from meaninglessness. It is relevant because our emotions make it relevant — and it gives us an opportunity to coat the essential artificiality of the activity with the reality of our most positive feelings.

Cricket is full of contradictions. Administrators who should be preserving its status as a touchstone of goodness cheat and lie, and live for the bottom line. Players who understand its place in society and owe everything to it, compromise for the extra dollar. It is a sickening win-win situation: the BCCI keeps the players happy in return for their silence.

One or the other group has to ensure they are guardians of the sport. In India, it was finally the Supreme Court which took upon itself that role because neither officials nor players had the inclination.

Guha’s letter has raised some fundamental questions. Not just about the BCCI or the CoA. But about our relationship with cricket. And how much we are willing to ignore uncomfortable truths so long as a Kohli scores a hundred or an Ashwin claims five wickets. Passion should be made of sterner stuff.

Indian sport’s Forever Men

Nirmal Shekar in The Hindu

Many of the sports administrative bodies are besmirched by feudal attitudes where the top guys have reigned for long and appear to claim ownership rights over their ‘property’


The best thing that has happened to sports in India in a long, long time — longer perhaps than many of us have existed on this planet — is the laudably idealistic yet remarkably pragmatic intervention of the Supreme Court into Wild West territory — the landscape of cricket administration.
So much of what the well-meaning lay people have expected of the men who control sports has been trampled under mercilessly and maliciously, that a good majority of sports-lovers in the country have found refuge in nihilism and come to believe that nothing will change in the state of affairs.

When you think that something has been transformed for the better, very soon you realise it is nothing more than chimerical and it might be foolish and useless to bravely make your way through the haze.

If sports politics is even more Machiavellian than Indian politics in general, then that should come as no surprise. For we resign ourselves to the fact that sport is not a matter quite as important as electing the country’s Prime Minister.


Sliver of hope

But just when we thought that it is a tunnel without an end, the Supreme Court, headed by its upstanding, noble Chief Justice Mr. T.S. Thakur (who retired recently) has offered us a sliver of hope here or there — in fact much, much more than what we may have come to expect 70 years after the country’s Independence.

A popular, veteran Indian sportsperson, who tried to get into the administration of his sport not long ago, put it succinctly the other day when I asked him what was wrong with sports administration in the country at a time when the nation’s richest, and perhaps one of the world’s wealthiest sports bodies, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), was making front-page news for all the wrong reasons every day.

“You tell me what is right with it. It stinks. I shudder to think that such mismanagement, corruption, nepotism and chaos can exist in 2017,” he said.

Most well-meaning people in the world of sports, when asked the same question, not surprisingly come up with the same answer: “a total lack of professionalism.’’


Reasons for lagging

This is an over-arching judgement that seems to ignore the nuts and bolts of everyday affairs in major sports in the country. From experts down to lay fans, almost everybody has an opinion on why such a huge nation should not be among the leading performers in the world of sport. Infrastructure, money, attitude, culture…you can think of dozens of reasons why India does not stand tall in the world of sport.

Says Joaquim Carvalho, Olympian and hockey administrator “Sports governance in India lacks transparency and accountability. Most officials are not passionate about sports at all. They use this platform to keep themselves in the news and also indulge in corruption.

“I have a poor impression of sports governance because I have seen these officials as a player and later I as someone connected with the conduct of the game. They have vested interest and development of sport is never a priority for them. Basically, it helps them stay in the news, build connections and enjoy junkets. Sports governance in India is absolutely unprofessional.”

While it will be unfair to make a sweeping generalisation — there are a few sports that benefit from modern management where the administration is totally transparent in its business. But most are besmirched by feudal attitudes where the top guys have been the same since the days of your childhood, and they appear to claim ownership rights over their ‘property.’

‘Honorary’ positions are not ones manned by individuals with perfectly altruistic intentions. To even expect it is ridiculous. Even saints do what they do to get into the good books of the big, all-knowing, all-powerful man up there.


On an upward swing

There is a flip side to all this. Adille Sumariwala, IAAF executive council member and president, Athletics Federation of India, says, “Sports is on the upward swing in India. Television and the leagues in virtually all sports have increased the fan following. Children know the names of kabaddi players, not only cricketers. Television has brought sports to people, there is more awareness. It’s a matter of time before sports emerges much stronger. There are opportunities to make sport a career in life. And so sports is on the upswing’’.

But here is the catch. Do we have honest officials with a long-term goals in mind? It is indeed boom-time in Indian sports. But the launching pads, corporate support and fans’ enthusiasm may quickly evaporate if the quality of administration remains the same.

How many of our present sports administrators come in with a clear mandate and then move forward stridently to carry it out? Do they go through the same strict annual evaluation process as do brilliant business school graduates?

Success as sports administrators demands a few basic skills in areas such as communication, organisation, decision making, value system and team building.

“Indian sports administrators are special. I must admit that. They are in a category of their own,” said the late Peter Roebuck, my best friend among foreign journalists visiting India frequently, during one of our post dinner conversations.

What Roebuck referred to was mainly cricket but he was curious enough to want to know more and more about other sports. Leadership skills can be either cultivated or learned but the men and women who run our sports are keen on only one thing — staying where they are with a great love for being in the spotlight.

How many times have we seen sports bosses appearing prominently in photographs of athletes who return after world-beating success at airports across the country?

Long ago, a top Indian sportsman returning after winning the world championship told me something that was shocking. I asked him who the gentleman who was hugging him in the front page of a leading Indian English language paper? “I swear, I have never seen the guy before,” he said of a man who was a senior administrator in the sport.

Of course, the nameless one is part of the Forever Men club.

Supreme Court brings Indian cricket into the 21st century

Suresh Menon in The Hindu


The world’s most successful secret society has been given a lesson in transparency and that is cause for celebration.

No tears need be wasted on the panjandrums who have been running the Board of Control for Cricket in India and its State associations like personal fiefdoms.

The Supreme Court finally reeled in the long rope it had given the BCCI, and so tripped up its senior officials. If there was contrition among the officials, these remained unexpressed. Yesterday’s powerhouses will be tomorrow’s forgotten men, their frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command erased forever.

Inevitably, some good men will be thrown out with the bad, and there will be much churning as the old order makes way for the new. The saner elements of the board will wonder if it had to come to this, when, with greater maturity and common sense, the BCCI might have emerged with some dignity.

For the BCCI brought about its own downfall, aided by nothing more than its hubris and cavalier disregard for the laws of the land. You cannot ignore a Supreme Court judgement, as the BCCI did, and hope that nothing will change. It wasn’t just arrogance, it was foolishness of the highest order.

Would past presidents like Chinnaswamy and Sriraman, Gaekwad and Bindra, Dungarpur and Dalmiya have allowed things to come to this pass? It is convenient to believe they wouldn’t. But there is false memory at play here, a harking back to a golden era that never existed. Ghulam Ahmed, former off spinner and board vice-president, put it succinctly, “There are no values in the board.”

The Anurag Thakurs and Ajay Shirkes are paying the price for the culture that men like those mentioned had brought into the BCCI. These men ran the best sports body in the country, and somehow believed that they had a divine right to do so. Players kowtowed to them, politicians and businessmen chased them, and they clung on to power with a touching desperation.

The current dispensation extended that culture and refined it. They, like their predecessors, failed to understand the connection between actions and consequences.

At any time in the BCCI’s eight-decade history, the Supreme Court could have stepped in and ruled as it did now. Accountability and transparency were never in the BCCI’s handbook for officials, but public scrutiny was not as intense as it is now, and in some cases the good that an official did outweighed the bad, and all was forgiven.

Brinkmanship — a tactic much favoured by the BCCI to bring other cricket boards and indeed the International Cricket Council to its knees — is not a strategy guaranteed to impress the Supreme Court. That the highest court gave the BCCI more than six months to comply with its order when it could have acted even as deadlines were ignored is a testimony to its benevolence.

But how did a three-time Member of Parliament, which is what Anurag Thakur is, and sundry other luminaries, misjudge the seriousness of the situation? Was this a proxy war fought on behalf of his political masters by Thakur, or was the board, recognising the inevitable, preparing for a scorched earth response? The first will have to remain in the realm of speculation till a lead actor in the drama spills the beans. We shall soon know about the second.

The BCCI’s death wish has been one of the features of the whole saga. Thakur came in as the bright, young face of the board. There was an energy about him which makes his fall a disappointment. At 42 he was the man who replaced the old guard. Yet, within weeks, the cozy club he had tried to break up when N. Sinivasan was in charge, quickly reshaped itself into a new cozy club.

His fall is a cautionary tale for those who set out to change the system but is absorbed by it. The Supreme Court’s ruling will also impact other sports which have been resisting change like the BCCI. And that is good news for Indian sport.
The domestic season has been unaffected by the BCCI’s problems. This has been the case traditionally, and is one of the true blessings of Indian cricket. There are enough dedicated officials to ensure that the show goes on.

A generational change has been forced upon the BCCI, which is otherwise happy to continue with sons and nephews (never daughters and nieces) and other relatives keeping everything in the family.

Now State associations will have to change their registrations where necessary, holding general body meetings in order to advance this. Legal procedures need to be followed. There is a temptation to believe that cricketers make the best administrators. This is a common fallacy. There are cricketers who have made excellent administrators, but being able to play the square cut is no guarantee of managerial skills. The names of corrupt cricketer-officials are well known.

There is a long road ahead, mostly uncharted. But a start has been made. The new system may not be perfect, but it is better than the old one. Accountability ensures that.

BCCI, Katju and Cricket in India

Suhrith Parthasarathy in The Hindu

The Board of Control for Cricket in India’s decision last week to appoint a former Supreme Court judge, Justice Markandey Katju, to “interact with the Justice Lodha Committee” and to “advise and guide” the BCCI on its affairs is, at best, an effort at prevarication, and, at worst, a subversion of the Supreme Court’s authority. Exacerbating the tension, following his appointment, Justice Katju, rather indecorously given his stature as a retired judge, on August 6 released what he termed as a “first report,” with “more reports to follow,” in which he declared the Supreme Court’s judgment appointing the Lodha Committee as illegal and unconstitutional.

It is one thing to critique the court’s judgment as an outsider; for instance, it is plausible to argue, even if incorrectly, that the court ought to have exercised greater restraint in interfering with the board’s affairs. But to do as Justice Katju has, to advise a party to openly disregard the Supreme Court’s verdict, presents a dangerous proposition, one that is far more threatening than any act of judicial overreach. What’s more, in any event, given the peculiar facts and circumstances surrounding the BCCI’s structure, Justice Katju’s assertion that the court has exceeded its brief also fails to pass muster. If anything, these developments exemplify precisely why the Supreme Court’s intervention in this case was justified.

Why we play sport

To understand why the Supreme Court thought it fit to appoint the committee presided by the former Chief Justice of India, R.M. Lodha, to inquire into, and to recommend changes, to the BCCI’s organisation, we must confront a few fundamental questions. Too often, amid the chaotic world of modern sport, we tend to lose track of why we play sport, why we watch games, why we revel in them, and why we invest so much of our emotions into seemingly pointless pursuits. We must first ask ourselves, therefore, what the abiding purpose of cricket is. What do we want from it? Is the sport meant for pure entertainment? Can it be commercially exploited by a band of the elite owing no responsibility to the public? Or do we want the sport to represent a higher, more virtuous purpose? If so, how are we to achieve these ends?

To take any sport seriously, and to ask such questions, seems to represent, in some ways, an incongruity in terms. In fact, many commentators considered the adjudication of the dispute concerning the BCCI and allegations of spot-fixing as a waste of the Supreme Court’s precious time. The public, they warned, was according more importance to cricket than it really deserved. But the danger, contrary to such counsel, is not that we are taking sport too seriously. It is that we are not taking sport seriously enough.

As the American academic, Jan Boxill, has argued, sport serves to establish a moral function for society. It is “an unalienated activity which is required for self-development, self-expression, and self-respect”; or, put differently, it is morally important because it is “the art of the people,” one that ought to be included in what Marx termed as the “realm of freedom”. In India, where cricket plays such a pervasive role, the sport would therefore have to necessarily be seen as a primary cultural good, one which, to borrow from another American, the philosopher John Rawls, is critical to the fulfilment of a person’s conception of a good life. In that sense, access to cricket has to be considered as an end in and of itself, and as not in any manner subservient to some other veiled purpose, especially entertainment or business. In his marvellous epic, Beyond a Boundary, C.L.R. James argued that cricket allows us a grasp of a more complete human existence, where social justice is a legitimate aim. To seize ownership of the game we must, therefore, hold cricket’s administrators answerable to standards of public law, a check that would help in bringing about within cricket’s province a more equal distribution of resources.

When it sat in judgment over the various shenanigans of the BCCI and its management of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the Supreme Court recognised some of these values inherent in cricket. For years, ever since its inception, the BCCI had functioned as its own master, as a sovereign whose diktats were decisive and unquestionable. As this dominion began to extend beyond India into a global clout, the inability to hold the board publicly accountable became graver still. Governments came and went, but legislative intervention has never been on the horizon.

A private society?

Until the Supreme Court intervened last year, every time the courts were approached, judges too vacillated, as the board bandied about its customary defence, one that Justice Katju has also invoked in his report: that the board is merely a private society, to which conventional standards of public law are simply inapplicable. Indeed, the BCCI, which was originally formed in 1928 as an unregistered association of persons, is now enrolled as a private body, under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act of 1975. Today, more than 30 members, including public sector undertakings such as the Railways and the Services, subscribe to the board’s Memorandum of Association, which includes, among its objects, the promotion and control of the game of cricket in India, the encouragement of the formation of State and regional cricket associations, and, most significantly, the selection of the Indian national cricket team.

At first blush, the BCCI’s argument might appear to make sense. Traditionally, private societies are responsible only to their members, and it is for these clubs to determine for themselves what best represent the interest of their associates. Therefore, for any of the board’s decisions to stand the law’s scruples, all that is required is the concurrence of its members, which is to be secured through a procedure that the memorandum provides. When people outside the BCCI’s membership enter into independent relationships with the board — such as employment contracts or purchase of TV rights — those relationships would also, according to the board, remain purely in the realm of private law.

Yet, before the Supreme Court intervened last year, the BCCI, emboldened by this status as a supposed private body, consistently diluted the underlying values in cricket, viewing these as somehow inferior to the board’s grand project of commercially exploiting the sport. When, for instance, incidents of conflicts of interest within the board have been questioned, the board’s arguments proceeded on these lines: if the BCCI’s members are satisfied that a person who owned an IPL team could also contest and hold office as the board’s president, the courts, including the Supreme Court, simply lacked the authority to judicially review such decisions.

But in its judgment, delivered on January 22, 2015, which resonated amongst cricket fans around the world, the Supreme Court rebuffed these arguments. Not only did it haul up the BCCI and question the body’s standards of governance but it also explicitly ruled that the board was amenable to public scrutiny. “Such is the passion for this game in this country that cricketers are seen as icons by youngsters, middle aged and the old alike,” wrote Justice T.S. Thakur (now Chief Justice of India) on behalf of the court. “Any organisation or entity that has such pervasive control over the game and its affairs and such powers as can make dreams end up in smoke or come true cannot be said to be undertaking any private activity.”

A clear purpose

Or in other words, what the court was really telling us is this: that cricket is a basic good, the access to which is critical to the fulfilment of a good life. When the court appointed the Lodha Committee, its intention, therefore, was to create a structure through which the sport can be made more accessible and more equal. The committee’s report, which was released on January 4, 2016, seeks to do just this. It recommends, among other things, that each Indian State would only be entitled to a single vote within the BCCI, a mandate that is likely to damage a coterie of power held by Maharashtra and Gujarat that have three associations each. What’s more, it directs the establishment of an apex council of nine members, overseen by a reputable chief executive officer, comprising three independent persons, with two from a newly constituted “players’ association”, and at least one woman, to conduct the day-to-day administration of the sport in the country; the institution of lucid norms within the BCCI’s constitution to regulate conflicts of interest, including the reduction in involvement from politicians; and, most critically, a more reasonable division, if not a complete separation, between the BCCI and the IPL.

The argument today, made in Justice Katju’s report, is that any change to the BCCI’s structure must come either from within or through legislative intervention. But neither of these, as history tells us, is conceivable. In bringing about a change in the board’s structure through the Lodha Committee’s recommendations, the Supreme Court isn’t making law. It is merely making accountable a body that enjoys a virtually state-sanctioned monopoly, which allows it to alter the fundamental nature of a property that it holds in trust for the public. It is astounding that the board would object to these recommendations, for all they do is establish a basic framework for good governance.

In the final analysis, we must ask ourselves this: do we want to see cricket as constituting an end by itself, as a sport that is both ethically and morally significant? If the answer to this question is yes, we must not only cause the BCCI to embrace the Lodha Committee’s recommendations but also push towards an even more revolutionary process of reform; one through which the game can eventually be brought closer to the common Indian public, where the sport’s ownership is reclaimed from those who have tarnished it beyond recognition.

What next for the BCCI?

Sharda Ugra in Cricinfo

There is no knowing whether anyone in the BCCI is a fan of either Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin or Albert Einstein. Supreme Court judges definitely are, going by the opening paragraphs of the 143-page judgement issued by the two-man bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur and Justice FMI Kalifullah. The three mighty minds were quoted when discussing humankind's resistance to change, with the bench recognising that the BCCI's strident objections to the Lodha committee recommendations were meant to protect a "continuance of the status quo".

The Supreme Court's final order directly addresses and proceeds to upturn the BCCI's objections to the Lodha recommendations, which detailed organisational reform within India's richest sporting body and cricket's strongest board. The court accepted both the Lodha report and its recommendations with a handful of minor "modifications and clarifications". This marks the end of three years of miscalculations by individual office-bearers, and collective decision-making by the BCCI that began with the arrest of three cricketers in May 2013.

What happens next? In real terms, the day-to-day operations of Indian cricket will keep running. Like the Lodha report, the Supreme Court order once again separates governance from operations. The operational BCCI continues on its way, now armed with a CEO, an ombudsman, an ethics officer, and a full-time professional auditor. What has been rigorously shaken, with nuts and bolts now left rattling, is the existing frame of the BCCI, which is less stainless steel and more rusted metal.

The order lays down a fairly watertight list of strictures for aspiring cricket officials, focusing on what posts they can hold in cricket administration, particularly at the highest level, and for how long. The much-advertised "love for cricket" of many seasoned, or indeed newly appointed, cricket officials will now be put to the test. The court has ordered that the recommendations be implemented within six months - by the time Justice TS Thakur serves his full term and hands charge for the BCCI's restructuring to the very individuals who held up a mirror to the board: Team Lodha.

The Supreme Court's order was fairly considerate when hammering home a few disputed recommendations. Fussed about how to fund a players' association? the court asked. The funding is your prerogative, but there has got to be an association. Angry about a "cooling-off period" between two terms in top BCCI posts? Arrive at a conclusion on how to handle this, but the cooling-off period stays. IPL franchises on the all-powerful IPL governing council? Let's ask the Lodha committee to work out if this is not a conflict of interest and then see what they say.

The court divorced itself from issuing unyielding orders on matters that were not strictly within the Lodha panel's reformative and recommendatory ambit. Like controlling the amount and nature of advertising on cricket broadcasts on television by reworking existing deals (this recommendation was dead on arrival on the grounds of common sense alone), or knotty legislative issues like legalising betting or placing the BCCI under the ambit of the Right to Information Act.

Weighty, monumental (and cataclysmic for the BCCI), the Lodha report order carries much significance. If the BCCI, a financially self-sufficient, self-sustaining and globally significant sports body - and therefore an anomaly among Indian sports bodies - can be made answerable to writ jurisdictions, its functioning taken apart in court, so can any other Indian national sports federation. These bodies that run India's Olympic sports, largely supported by public money, have previously been considered untouchable, backed as they are by political bigwigs and legal luminaries.

The Thakur-Kalifullah bench has cited the government's National Sports Development Code 2011 - which applies to all nationally recognised sports bodies - in setting an age limit of 70 for the BCCI's office-bearers. What applies to other sports bodies must work for the BCCI. So too, what has been ordered upon the BCCI, could be wrought upon any other Indian sports body.

An example has been made of the BCCI, until now considered well above these shambolically run associations, both financially and organisationally. No matter how much financial strength and global clout a sports body can acquire, it must work alongside with, rather than supplant, good governance, transparency and accountability.

The BCCI's response in this affair from the outset - despite the presence of many weighty shining legal lights on its roster and on its side - was heavy-handed. Both in court and in the public. The board's first response was to let out a few high-volume sound bites: that the recommendations were not binding, that the BCCI was a private body and so it could not be approached as if it were a public enterprise. It was this line of argument that occupied far too much of the court's time, and must have set the judges' teeth on edge.

One of the more revealing parts of the order says: "Neither BCCI nor anyone else has assailed the findings recorded by the Committee insofar as the deep rooted malaise that pervades in the working of the BCCI is concerned… either in the affidavits filed or in the course of arguments at the bar." Which in layman's language means that neither the BCCI nor anyone else has strongly criticised the Lodha committee's findings with reference to the flaws in the BCCI's functioning, neither in written affadavits filed or verbal arguments made before the bench. The BCCI was not righteously claiming to having been unfairly criticised with reference to its functioning. What it was saying to the highest court of the country - and the highest judge in that court - was that you do not have the right to tick us off.

The better option could have been to respond strategically to the Lodha committee report from the very beginning, by picking out early the recommendations they thought were the least amenable to implementation, or inconvenient, and work with that, approaching the court with humility rather than habitual hubris. They had a better chance of arguing the age limit and tenure continuity at length than they did about private vs public and the freedom of association as pertaining to the state associations. That too in a climate surrounding the BCCI's laissez faire attitude to the Goa Cricket Association's multiple scandals until the last month or so and theshenanigans of DDCA, also exposed in court.

The BCCI's legal eagles should also have been able to sense two moods - that the BCCI's public image was far from the best to start with, particularly in terms of its engagement with the judiciary. Secondly, in the past few years, India's courts have been particularly forceful in handing out judgements pertaining to governance or administration, a trend that has been referred to as "judicial activism" (or, in the words of policy academic Pratap Bhanu Mehta, "judicial exasperation"). For the BCCI it was certainly not the right time to show what would be called "attitude". But show it they did.

What might the BCCI's options now be? To start with, they could consider hiring a new legal team. A short-term response would be to disband the board and resume operations under a new name. Or dash off a letter to the ICC saying the Supreme Court has ordered them to accept government interference - in the form of the nominee from the Comptroller and Auditor General's Office - at both national or state levels. Or attempt some off-court filibustering in front of Lodha to try and stall any action, till Justice Thakur retires in January and they can begin the legal roundabout all over again.

But each of these counters has its counter-arguments. Besides, Monday's order says clearly that "should any impediments arise" the Supreme Court can be approached once again by a status report being filed.

Many within the BCCI - and there are several who are well-intentioned and committed - may find their positions now rendered non-existent and their powers severely curtailed, and may well ask, "How did we get here?" The answer to that is simple - one mistake at a time.

Medical Council of India similar to BCCI?

The Hindu


The Supreme Court has given the Centre a deserved rebuke by using its extraordinary powers and setting up a three-member committee headed by former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha to perform the statutory functions of the Medical Council of India. The government now has a year to restructure the MCI, the regulatory body for medical education and professional practice. The Centre’s approach to reforming the corruption-afflicted MCI has been wholly untenable; the Dr. Ranjit Roy Chaudhury expert committee that it set up and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare in the Rajya Sabha had both recommended structural change through amendments to the Indian Medical Council Act. Now that the Lodha panel will steer the MCI, there is hope that key questions swept under the carpet at the council will be addressed quickly. Among the most important is the need to reduce the cost of medical education and increase access in different parts of the country. This must be done to improve the doctor-to-population ratio, which is one for every 1,674 persons, as per the parliamentary panel report, against the WHO-recommended one to 1,000. In fact, it may be even less functionally because not all registered professionals practice medicine. In reality, only people in bigger cities and towns have reasonable access to doctors and hospitals. Removing bottlenecks to starting colleges, such as conditions stipulating the possession of a vast extent of land and needlessly extensive infrastructure, will considerably rectify the imbalance, especially in under-served States. The primary criterion to set up a college should only be the availability of suitable facilities to impart quality medical education.

The development of health facilities has long been affected by a sharp asymmetry between undergraduate and postgraduate seats in medicine. There are only about 25,000 PG seats, against a capacity of 55,000 graduate seats. The Lodha committee is in a position to review this gap, and it can help the Centre expand the system, especially through not-for-profit initiatives. There is also the contentious issue of choosing a common entrance examination. Although the Supreme Court has allowed the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, some States are raising genuine concerns about equity and access. A reform agenda for the MCI must include an admission procedure that eliminates multiplicity of entrance examinations and addresses issues such as the urban-rural divide and language barriers. The Centre’s lack of preparedness in this matter, even after it was deliberated by the parliamentary panel, is all too glaring. The single most important issue that the Lodha committee would have to address is corruption in medical education, in which the MCI is mired. Appointing prominent persons from various fields to a restructured council would shine the light of transparency, and save it from reverting to its image as an “exclusive club” of socially disconnected doctors.

The Shashank Redemption - Why not make administrators our role models?

ROB STEEN in Cricinfo

By putting a stop to the brief reign of the Big Three, Shashank Manohar has managed to do something that defied criticism © Getty Images


I simply couldn't believe all the filth which came out of their mouths. All day long. And to anyone. It was hilarious but unrepeatable, and because I wanted them to treat me as one of the lads, I accepted it.

You really know how to control a match buddy. It's a f***ing joke.

Two snapshots of sport in 2016, both from Australia, the nation that, some might say, put the "tit" in competitive.

That first reverberant sound bite emerged last week from England wicketkeeper Sarah Taylor, semi-fondly reminiscing about her recent experiences as the first woman to play the highest grade of male club cricket for Northern Districts in Adelaide. Somewhat unsurprisingly, she discovered that her ears and sensibilities were not going to be spared. As Bryan Ferry so eloquently put it, "Boys will be boys will be boys-yoy-yoys…"

The second, decidedly unsound bite came during last month's Australian Open, when that gifted but very naughty overhead smasher Nick Kyrgios hit fresh heights in his impressive assault on John McEnroe's all-time record for sporting officials harangued, abused and ridiculed. Indeed, at the end of the match in question, Kyrgios approached James Keothavong, the latest object of his loathing, and told the British umpire he was "a terrible referee", thus achieving the notable double of being at once searingly honest and hopelessly wrong.

What distinguishes the verbals encountered by Taylor from those delivered by Kyrgios, of course, is that the former occurred during a match that was not covered by the all-seeing, almost-all-hearing broadcasters. What further unites them is that the rules of the respective games, at amateur and professional level alike, empower the enforcers to penalise the offensive offenders. It is in the now-histrionic court of public approval that things get messy.

Naturally, there are those - almost invariably the sort of folk who claim to have first-hand memories of the '60s but were already too old to join in the fun - who will assure you that bad behaviour during a sporting contest is a strictly late-20th-century curse, triggered by the advent of unseemly rewards and the TV-fuelled obsession with personalities and controversy. This is, of course, absolute rot.

For no justifiable reason, playing sport for a living - unlike acting or singing or dancing or painting - means not only having to behave yourself, but being seen to behave yourself.

Ask Colin McDonald. Roused by Mike Atherton's recent contention that Fred Trueman and Brian Statham were England's No. 1 all-time co-manipulators of the new cherry, the dogged former Australia opener recently reflected on the might of Frank "Typhoon" Tyson: "I will never forget the remarks made by my opening partner Jim Burke during the 1959 Adelaide Test after a Tyson bouncer: 'If you bowl another one of those I'll knock your block off with this bat.' 'Will yer?' replied Frank. Not wishing to enjoy being the recipient of a similar delivery, my pleasant rejoinder to Tyson on his way back to his mark was 'Well bowled.'"

In emailing those wincing reminiscences to the Times, McDonald perhaps unwittingly highlighted the preposterousness of what might best be termed the sporting contract - that timeless unwritten constitution that obliges professional sportsfolk to seek victory at any cost but behave like a pre-pubescent Mormon; the same unwritten constitution that simultaneously obliges our competitive artists to remember, above all, that it's only a blimmin' game.

For those who regard ungentlemanly conduct as perpetually indefensible, last week's Under-19 World Cup game between West Indies and Zimbabwe in Chittagong proffered much to get high and mighty about. With one over remaining and the Zimbabweans requiring a further three runs, Richard Ngarava was "mankaded" by Keemo Paul, sending waves of disgust rippling around the planet.

Indeed, it says all too much about cricket's self-deluding self-image that a photograph of the incident made its way onto the English sports pages even though not one of Blighty's nine national daily papers sent a correspondent to the tournament - thus missing the lethally precocious magnificence of Alzarri Shaheim Joseph, a skyscraping Antiguan beanpole who seems destined to put Kemar Roach and Jerome Taylor to shame by becoming the millennium's first great lean, mean Caribbean pace machine.

In principle, this column agrees wholeheartedly with Tony Cozier: the notion of being honour-bound to deliver a pre-emptive warning is more than a little stupefying. For one thing, it's not as if we expect batsmen to stick their hand up and inform the bowler they're about to suddenly take guard the other way round. For another, baseball, cricket's uppity younger brother, has always been more clear-cut: if a runner is caught straying off base while sneakily seeking a head start, he's out and that's it. No ethical posturing or accusations of moral bankruptcy here. In fact, such dismissals are so common they have their own incriminating name: "picked off".



If Ched Evans wins his appeal and is re-signed by Sheffield United, will he be greeted with apologies? © Getty Images


Should we be perturbed that teenagers such as Paul appear to be every bit as prepared as their elders and alleged betters to seek any legitimate advantage available rather than concern themselves with something so nebulous as "the spirit" of the game? The opposite conclusion should be drawn: their priority is to demonstrate that they are capable of making the leap from outstanding amateurs to - at the very least - competent professionals.

For no justifiable reason, playing sport for a living - unlike acting or singing or dancing or painting - means not only having to behave yourself, but being seen to behave yourself. On and off the park. Why rugby flankers or NFL tight ends - whose job is to disrupt the opposition by virtually any means necessary - should be expected to be angels beyond the touchline is utterly beyond this column's ken. Since successful athletes tend to peak in their late 20s, all this column can say is that when it was that age, it was about as mature as day-old cheddar. Then there are the stresses and strains of doing one's job in public, unaided by an editor or body double, never mind in the incessant glare of the octopus otherwise known as the media. Shouldn't compassion be more prevalent than self-righteous, hypocritical indignation?

This is not to say there are not intensely problematic cases. Nor decry the many Sheffield United FC fans - among them the Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill, whose name was removed from a stand at Bramall Lane after she, along with many others, threatened to end their loyalty should the club re-sign the convicted rapist Ched Evans. Nor fault Atlanta Falcons for releasing Michael Vick in 2009 after the quarterback had spent 21 months in jail for running a dogfighting ring. Vick, though, rediscovered his mojo by kind permission of the Philadelphia Eagles. As for Evans, who has always maintained his innocence, his case has been referred to the Court of Appeal. What happens if the verdict is reversed? Would United re-sign him? Would (anti) social media resound with apologies?

"I'm not paid to be a role model. I'm paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court." Thus, in a largely forgotten 1993 commercial, stated the NBA star Charles Barkley, hitting the nail squarely on the head. "Funny how big shots accept all the trappings of role model-dom - especially the residual commercial cash - before they renounce their broader responsibilities to society," retorted Phil Mushnick in the New York Post. Meanwhile, in Sports Illustrated, Barkley's fellow NBA alumnus Karl Malone jabbed hard: "Charles... I don't think it's your decision to make. We don't choose to be role models, we are chosen. Our only choice is whether to be a good role model or a bad one."

Begging to differ was the Boston College sociologist Michael Malec, former editor of theJournal of Sport and Social Issues. "In essence Barkley is correct. If you want to emulate what he does on court, you've got a wonderful model there. That doesn't necessarily mean he ought to be a model as a father or husband."

Time, then, for a radical rethink: if we really must have role models, should we not look to the administrators, the purported adults? Plainly, suggesting even a tiny proportion fit the bill is tantamount to proposing that the next best option is Robert Mugabe (the current No. 1 global dictator, according to Forbes magazine, just ahead of Bashar al-Assad). Fishing a good guy out of the alphabet soup containing such toxic ingredients as the ICC, IOC, IAAF and FIFA, is akin to locating a needle in the Pacific Ocean.

Tim Wigmore was spot on when he pointed out that, before India - with a little help from their equally greedy, yellow-bellied pals in Australia and England - started muscle-flexing in earnest, the ICC was scarcely a model of enlightened governance. On the other hand, quoting the questionable wit and dubious wisdom of Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's former chief of staff ("Never let a serious crisis go to waste") was perhaps not the wisest choice.

Emanuel, after all, "seems committed", attested that zealous American scourge of bad sports Dave Zirin, "to win the current spirited competition as the most loathsome person in American political life". As mayor of Chicago, Emanuel demonstrated how the profits generated by spectator sport can distort social values. Having overseen the closure of 54 schools and six mental-health clinics under the justification of a "budgetary crisis", he handed over $100 million-plus to DePaul University for a new basketball arena.

What, then, of Shashank Manohar? In terminating the mercifully brief reign of the "Big Three" with suitable prejudice, he should be feted as the first major sporting administrator in recent memory to do something that defied criticism. Nonetheless, there are no fewer than three Ranji Trophy sides in his own state. As reader Jose P observed in a comment: "The diversity, and complexity of the well-entrenched multiple power centres within the BCCI structure, is a thousand gordian knots knotted into a more complex humongous knot."

Still, let's be generous and optimistic out there: anyone for the Shashank redemption?

The emirate of Indian cricket and its subjects

Mukul Kesavan in Cricinfo

What sort of cricketing culture sees conflict of interest as normal? The answer lies in the history of cricket administration in India.

Long-time observers of the BCCI know that it used to be cricket's answer to the medieval city state. No Medici controlled Florence as comprehensively as the BCCI controlled cricket in India. The Board of Control was an independent principality, located in India, surrounded by India, but not of India. Its jurisdiction over cricket in India was as absolute as the Vatican's over Catholicism; it brooked no interference in its affairs, not even from the nation state that enclosed it.

Its last pope showed his cardinals that he was the god of most things by turning conductor and orchestrating a symphony of conflicting interests. His orchestra pit was crowded with cricketers, ex-cricketers, captains, captains of industry, consultants, commentators, cooing starlets, all on the same page, bobbing to his baton. During his reign most living things in cricket's jungle became the board's creatures, bound by contract, muted by money and sworn to servility. Not everyone: the Great Indian Bedi, never a herd animal, wouldn't be corralled, but he was an exception. Most errant beasts that held out were forced back into the fold by the threat of excommunication. In the context of the godless present this meant not the eternal absence of the Lord's grace, but the permanent loss of the board's cash.

The board's independence was secured not by defying Leviathan but by co-opting it. Sharad Pawar, Arun Jaitley, Rajeev Shukla, even Narendra Modi, have all helped administer cricket in India. Unluckily for the BCCI, the Supreme Court couldn't be squared, and so this cricketing emirate with Dubai's soul and Abu Dhabi's reserves finds itself in danger of being regulated like a public sector undertaking.

The recent Supreme Court ruling got one thing exactly right: Indian cricket's original sin was the amendment of the virtuous clause in the BCCI's constitution that barred its office holders from taking a financial stake in any matches or tournaments organised by the board. It was this (retrospective) amendment that allowed N Srinivasan, then treasurer of the BCCI, to buy an IPL franchise, Chennai Super Kings. The conflict of interest that this created - especially after Srinivasan rose to become the president of the BCCI - was so enormous, so brazen, so perversely exemplary, that people involved with cricket's economy felt free to wallow in their own, smaller, conflicts.

One of the board's many apologists, appearing on a televised discussion of the Supreme Court's intervention, ingeniously cited the many conflicts of interest that Srinivasan's example had engendered, to normalise his own. If men like MS Dhoni and Rahul Dravid could hold sinecures at India Cements while captaining teams in the IPL, why were people so exercised about Srinivasan's double role?

The short answer to this is that a) Srinivasan's position as Indian cricket's primate and CSK's boss made his conflicts of interest a systemic threat to the health of Indian cricket, and b) Srinivasan's conflicts created an actual, not theoretical, crisis of credibility for Indian cricket. But it's worth taking the apologist's question seriously and supplying a longer answer to understand the cricketing culture that allowed these conflicts of interest to seem normal, even legitimate.

While trying to understand Indian cricket's deafness to the notion of a conflict of interest, it's useful to bear in mind a historical fact: the BCCI transitioned from an oligarchy of patrons to an oligarchy of rentiers and entrepreneurs inside 20 years.

Nominally, the BCCI presides over a pyramidal system of cricket administration based on indirect election. In actual fact most electoral colleges are owned by local grandees. Often a business family will dominate the local cricket association for decades. The elections that legitimise the present system have more in common with the politics of rigged pocket boroughs in 18th-century England than the broad democracy of republican India. Elections to the BCCI, the apex body of Indian cricket, are often accompanied by a chorus of allegations about rigging, gerrymandering and accreditation.

The BCCI is run by a cabal of colonial-style patrons. This self-perpetuating clique struck oil less than 20 years ago. It recognised the potential of revenue streams created by economic liberalisation and successfully connected an opaque club of amateur administrators with real money. The coming of cable television and the consolidation of a national television audience created the revenues that underwrote the first generation of endorsement superstars: Kapil Dev, Azharuddin, Tendulkar. Once, Doordarshan telecast cricket as a kind of republican duty to India's cricket-mad citizens; then private television channels learnt it was a privilege for which they had to pay vast sums.

The game was so comprehensively monetised that the BCCI began demanding fees to permit the photographing of matches and the broadcasting of radio commentary. The idea that cricket was news or even that it was an event in the real world that could be reported on, gratis, gave way to the idea that cricket was proprietary entertainment that could only be captured in pictures or the spoken word for a fee. ESPNcricinfo briefly stopped calling IPL teams by their franchise names because it was advised that these names were commercial properties that couldn't be used without payment.





With us or against us: the BCCI had the last laugh when Kapil Dev chose to side with the rebel ICL © AFP

The monetising of cricket occurred within an administrative culture where the BCCI's officials still saw themselves as "honorary" patrons. Before the boom these men had leveraged their status as cricket's patrons into social standing as city grandees. For ex-rajas and aspirational businessmen - traditionally, big business didn't bother with cricket - cricket was a way of being someone on the regional or national stage.

N Srinivasan's back story fits the model. He ran India Cements, he was genuinely interested in sport and he was a pillar of Madras society. For him, as for the Rungtas in Rajasthan or Dalmiya in Bengal, cricket was a route to social consequence and the public eye. In Madras, Srinivasan was preceded as patron by two other industrialists, AC Muthiah and his father MA Chidambaram, after whom the stadium at Chepauk is named. It's important to recognise that men like Chidambaram, Muthiah and Srinivasan didn't make money out of the game before the boom. They actually spent their own money subsidising cricketers and cricket because this was what patrons did.

In this way the men who governed Indian cricket came to see themselves as benefactors and the men who played cricket in India learnt to recognise them as such. Through the long shamateur epoch of Indian cricket, cricketers were supported by sinecures in private companies and public sector undertakings, and socialised into the role of dependent clients. It was a recognition forced upon them by the need to make a living in a sport that had no business model and generated no money.

These patron-client relationships survived the monetisation of Indian cricket, which happened, it's worth remembering, with bewildering speed. Even after successful cricketers became rich men, members of a sporting super elite, they went along with being infantilised as clients. There were three broad reasons for this.

One, gratitude. They remembered the hard times and were grateful for the support that patrons like Srinivasan had extended to the sport. India Cements had dozens of players on its rolls. It supported league cricket in Madras and helped players - not necessarily international players - make a living. (It wasn't alone in this. Sungrace Mafatlal supported cricket generously in Bombay; Sachin Tendulkar joined its Times Shield team in 1990 after his Test debut. It is something of an irony that this fabric brand didn't survive the economic liberalisation that helped make both Tendulkar and the BCCI fabulously wealthy.)

Two, pragmatism. Players recognised that while the financial basis of the sport and their own financial standing might have been transformed by sponsorship, endorsements and television revenue, the men who ran this new money-spinning machine were the same patrons who had run the shamateur, shabby-genteel set-up in the earlier era. It made complete sense to say yes if a patron like Srinivasan wanted you on his rolls even if the money from the sinecure made no real difference to your net worth.

Three, fear. To annoy the BCCI was to be exiled from Indian cricket and its economy; it was much safer to acknowledge the power of these "honorary" patrons than to be your own man. Here the ruthless purge of the Indian Cricket League rebels was the cautionary tale. A board that could unperson Kapil Dev, arguably the greatest Indian cricketer of the television age, for daring to dabble in an unauthorised league, was not to be crossed.

Thus, administrators like Srinivasan, persuaded of their virtue because of their generosity as patrons, were consumed by a sense of entitlement that made the very suggestion of a conflict of interest an impertinence. And players, used to deferring to patrons who made their livelihoods possible, found it hard to break the habit of clientage even when they didn't need the money. The idea that a sinecure might constitute a conflict of interest must have seemed preposterous: how could something endorsed by Srinivasan, uber-patron and undisputed master of the cricketing universe, be wrong?

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that he was wrong, that there is such a thing as a conflict of interest and that the amendment of rule 6.2.4 was illegal, Indian cricket's supple auxiliaries have started airing their doubts about Srinivasan. The ex-player, the ex-IPL franchise manager, the marketing consultant, the sports management agent, the plausible commentator, have begun shyly sharing their long-brewed conviction that something was amiss. Shyly, because it isn't yet clear that the sheikh is dead, and given Srinivasan's past resilience who can blame them?

Will Indian cricket be regulated into virtue by the Supreme Court? It's hard to tell. But we do know that a precedent has been laid down by the court: the judiciary has stepped in and taken charge of the affairs of the BCCI. It has dismissed the BCCI's claim of being a private body. It has amended the BCCI's constitution, instructed Srinivasan to either sell CSK or withdraw from board elections, and assigned the reform of the board to a committee of three retired judges. It'll be a nice irony if the crony capitalism of this cabal becomes the proximate cause of a creeping nationalisation of Indian cricket.

BCCI - Time for an overhaul

Sambit Bal in Cricinfo

To grasp the true significance of the seminal verdict handed down by India's Supreme Court in the IPL spot-fixing case, we need to look beyond the immediate. Beyond N Srinivasan, who has grabbed the headlines; beyond the improprieties, both alleged and proven, that were under scrutiny; and beyond the turf wars within and surrounding the BCCI, which resulted in this case being filed.

The central message delivered by the court is a simple but powerful one: sport, cricket in this case, is sustained by the faith of the fans, and administrators are only custodians of that faith. It's a principle the BCCI has observed mostly in the breach, and the highest court of the land has started a process of redressal.

Over the last few years the BCCI has been presented, through a series of controversies and scandals, several opportunities for course correction and institutional reform but each of these has been spurned due to a combination of hubris and self-interest. The Supreme Court has now decided that the BCCI is neither capable of cleaning up its own act, nor can it be trusted with the job.

The cloud over Srinivasan's re-election as BCCI president has dominated the immediate news agenda but the most consequential part of the judgement is that the board has now been brought within the ambit of judicial scrutiny that public and state bodies are subjected to. Simply put, the BCCI can no longer be a law unto itself under the guise of being a private organisation.

The tenor of the judgement is unequivocal and unambiguous: with governance must come accountability and propriety, and responsibility doesn't end with protecting the bottom line; the fiduciary obligation of a sports organisation extends beyond the bottom line to protecting the integrity and credibility of the game.

For these alone, it is a profoundly groundbreaking judgement. To quote:

"[The] BCCI's commercial plans for its own benefit and the benefit of the players are bound to blow up in smoke if the people who watch and support the game were to lose interest or be indifferent because they get to know that some business interests have hijacked the game for their own ends or that the game is no longer the game they know or love because of frauds on and off the field. There is no manner of doubt whatsoever that the game enjoys its popularity and raises passions only because of what it stands for and because the people who watch the sport believe that it is being played in the true spirit of the game without letting any corrupting influence come anywhere near the principles and fundamental imperatives considered sacrosanct and inviolable."

The immediate fallout of the judgement will be felt most severely by Srinivasan, who has remained cricket's most powerful figure despite being off the BCCI throne. He has been given the clear option of choosing between the BCCI presidency, a position he dearly covets, and ownership of Chennai Super Kings, the highly successful IPL franchise that he has assiduously nurtured.

It's a decision he ought to have taken months ago when it became demonstrably apparent - in case it hadn't been at the time of his acquiring the franchise - that his two hats were irredeemably incompatible. It wasn't so much a matter of his complicity in the wrongdoings of his son-in-law as it was the mere perception of him being in a position of influence when matters relating to his own franchise came up for adjudication.

In striking down the controversial amendment to the BCCI's constitution that allowed Srinivasan to buy CSK, the court said it violated "a fundamental tenet of law that no one can be a judge in his own cause''.

But while Srinivasan's adversaries in the BCCI publicly rejoiced in his discomfiture once the judgement was delivered, few of them can escape culpability. The truth is that the judgement is an indictment of the system. That includes those - Sharad Pawar, Shashank Manohar, IS Bindra and Lalit Modi included - who were party to the constitutional amendment that institutionalised conflict of interest, and then there has been the majority, who have been complicit through their acquiescence. It bears noting that Srinivasan was re-elected unopposed and unanimously even while this case was being heard.

And it can also be argued that while Srinivasan sought and obtained the organisation's sanction for acquiring a commercial interest in the IPL, it is not the first or only instance of a conflict of interest in the BCCI. The father-in-law of Pawar's daughter had a stake in Multi Screen Media, which owned broadcast rights to the IPL; and an affidavit filed by Srinivasan in April 2014, during the hearing of this case, pointed out that Bindra's son had been an employee of Nimbus, the company that owned BCCI television rights between 2006 and 2014, while the company negotiated, and obtained, a discount of nearly US$50 million from a BCCI committee on which Bindra was a member.

The judgement is, however, the beginning of a process that will be now be taken forward by the three-member committee entrusted with the critical task of deciding the punishment for Gurunath Meiyappan - who, it has now been established, was a Super Kings official for all purposes, and who was found to have been betting for and against his own team, and chillingly, in one instance, bet on his team scoring within a range that was one run off the eventual total - and Raj Kundra, a shareholder in Rajasthan Royals. The committee is also tasked with examining the allegations against the conduct of Sundar Raman, the chief operating officer of the IPL, and with overseeing the forthcoming BCCI elections.

But potentially the most far-reaching part of its job will be to examine and recommend institutional reforms for the BCCI. Prima facie, the mandate seems all-encompassing: it covers the role and eligibility of administrators, regulations to resolve issues of conflict of interest, amendments that might be necessary to carry out the recommendations of the Mudgal Committee, and this open-ended mandate:

"Any other recommendation with or without suitable amendment of the relevant Rules and Regulations, which the Committee may consider necessary to make with a view to preventing sporting frauds, conflict of interests, streamlining the working of BCCI to make it more responsive to the expectations of the public at large and to bring transparency in practices and procedures followed by BCCI."

Shortly after the judgement was delivered, the BCCI released a statement welcoming the end of the uncertainty and offering its "unstinted co-operation" to the committee. It must now match its words in both deed and spirit. A combination of circumstances and entrepreneurship have handed it the leadership of world cricket through financial might. But real leadership can only be earned through credibility.

For the BCCI, all the battles outside have been won; the world has been conquered; past slights, real and perceived, have been avenged. It's time to look within.

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