Is BCCI a Board of Cunning and Corrupt India

Indian Media after a month long, relentless, almost breathless campaign against the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and its corrupt ways has been forced to look like fools. The richest sports body in the country, indeed among the richest in the world, has shown everyone who's the boss.

It has so disdainfully brushed aside every clamour for cleansing its act that one wonders if they even care about the fans that have made the game most popular sport in the country. And more importantly, do they really care about making it a sport and not a betting mafia in the garb of a sports body?

      I really can’t understand, what does the board president meant by stepping aside? His own son-in-law has been caught with his hand in the till. Even after dire attempts to claim that his son-in-law was neither the owner nor the principal of the team that the board’s president owns, the man travelled with the team, indeed entered the dugouts, as an enthusiast. Wow! So he is trying to say any enthusiast can do that… Is it?

        We are not even discussing here the conflict of interest where the board’s team captain is also the captain of the IPL franchisee he owns, and is even a honcho of the company he owns. Is it any surprise that when a selector as illustrious as Mohinder Amarnath, who was the man of the match in both the World Cup 1983 semi-final and final, demanded that this skipper be sacked after a disastrous tour of Australia in 2011-12, the board president actually showed Amarnath the door. This explains why the rest of the board members were so impotent, or at least acted so, that they did not have the guts to call a spade a spade and ask the man to just go?

         One feels sad for the cricket lovers of this country who have made the game as popular and bankable as any marketer can dream of. Look at the way the board treats them. Ever gone to witness a cricket game, be it an international or an IPL? It is the paying public that is pushed and shoved around the most. From entering the stadium to watching the game to exiting at the end of the game, it is they who are treated like cattle, while the VVIPs and freeloaders are ushered in and all facilities are made available to make them enjoy their stay at the venue.

        The richest cricket board in the world, which often misuses its financial clout to ride roughshod over other cricket boards, is blissfully unaware, or deliberately unaware. It continues to treat all those who matter with disdain, and even the players, as the team’s captain shows, are mere pawns. Cricketers like Dhoni and Tendulkar or anyone are big only in the eyes of the masses, for the administrators of this game, they are puppets.

        Sadly for them, thanks to the media’s relentless pressure, the paying public is now seeing through this. There is more chatter on how mismanaged the show is than ever before, and even though the IPL final boasted of a houseful despite the controversy, the board should know that the veneer of concern for the game is now very very thin. If the current enquiry and all else is shown to be an eyewash, as it is likely to be, the same public that is the reason for their clout will bring them down. This is very clearly seen in the TRPs of the present Champions Trophy matches in UK.