Sports: At Sixes and Sevens

Indian cricket is managed by a board notorious for its inefficiency and misplaced priorities.

This is the first deadly sin of sport: fiddling with a winning team. So the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) cleavered a successful team into two for the Sahara Cup and Commonwealth Games. This is the second deadly sin of sport: panicking under pressure. So the BCCI hemmed and hawed and sweated over who or when or how many to send to Toronto. Pick a country on the globe and sport officials would have been slaughtered for such stupidity. For the BCCI though it was business as usual: not even a hair shook, let alone a head roll.

BUNGLERS' LIST

No cricketer figures among the present senior BCCI office-bearers who are mostly bankers, politicians and businessmen.

Dalmiya is the head of world cricket. But reportedly all BCCI decisions require his approval.

BCCI committee's call meetings without any listed agenda. Most members consider it a three-day all-expense-paid holiday.

While the BCCI ignores former captains like Bishen Bedi and Srinivas Venkatraghavan, the Australian Cricket Board invites them to coach its players.

The BCCI lacks vision. Sri Lanka has a project named Cricket 2000; South African officials attend "Vision Seminars"; the English are setting up academies in their universities. But India has no such concrete plan to run the game along professional lines or tap talent.

Five minutes after the BCCI wrapped up its annual general meeting in Calcutta last week and the backslapping and lopsided grins were done with, out of curiosity I asked an official, "Tell me, these vice-presidents of the BCCI, what do they do?"

"Arre, there is one banker, the chairman of a fertiliser company, two politicians, a businessman and a corporate vice-president." Then, his preen firmly in place, he added, "There has never been a classier board."

All this is important. Because a hundred years from now, when archaeologists assiduously sift the dust in Calcutta charting the demise of India's cricketing civilisation, this will be their first clue.

There will be many more, for official ineptness lies everywhere. "There are," says a chairman of one BCCI committee, "people who tell me, 'Boss, organise a meeting, we'll chit-chat about Indian cricket'." With a Rs 3,000 daily allowance, a three-day "chit-chat" is rewarding. Better still is the startling rebuff to India's cricketing greats, like Sunil Gavaskar being told, "Bobby (Simpson) would like you to attend the Chennai camp." Bobby? Why doesn't the board want Gavaskar to attend the camp?

Indeed, so cockeyed is the state of Indian cricket that there is even confusion over who runs it. The sparrow-like 60-year-old Jaywant Lele, nowadays known as "Denial Lele" because he contradicts himself so often, is secretary of the BCCI and thus the boss. Or is he?

In England last week, writer Peter Roebuck called up the English Cricket Board (ECB) and asked media manager Nigel Peel, "Who does the ECB deal with in the Indian board?"

Said Peel: "Oh, Dalmiya (former BCCI secretary and now International Cricket Council President)."

Hours later, Peel called back and said, "No, no, no, it's Lele." Too late, it was a fatal slip of the tongue.

From a Delhi official, summoned once by Lele to help draft some letters, arrives another tale. He prepared the letters, but then watched as Lele faxed them to Dalmiya for his approval.

Dalmiya laughs. "If I had been running the BCCI's day-to-day business this sort of mess wouldn't have happened." He says he doesn't have the time to meddle with the BCCI, nor does he have the influence people believe he does. "There's nothing wrong if I am asked for advice on policy. But I don't have the power to throw out someone if he doesn't listen to me." Not everyone agrees. Sniggers a former player: "The board is not democratic, it's controlled by Dalmiya."

But who runs the board is itself less important than the truth that it is comatose -- overdosed on money some say. In organising tournaments, in raising sponsorship fees -- just ITC's three-year sponsorship is worth Rs 24 crore -- Dalmiya has been sensational. But this romance with finance has bred a monstrous race of cricketers: one story has it that some Indian players refused to take home their Man of the Match awards from the recent India-Kenya-Bangladesh series because the sums were too low (gratuitously, the cheques were given to dressing room attendants).

But money cannot buy dignity. It cannot deliver professionalism. Lele, who wrestled with reporters for weeks over the Commonwealth Games fiasco, finally admitted to India Today: "Yes, the Commonwealth Games episode has embarrassed the board. We should have applied ourselves when the dates were first announced, decided which teams would go where and stood by it."

One act of contrition is not enough. Ask Lele about Gavaskar's no-show at the Chennai camp and he argues, "The board president asked him in front of me." He pauses, then adds, "Yes, but we did not send him any letter." Says Gavaskar, "The letter is not the point. All the BCCI had to say was that it, not Bobby, wanted me to attend." Gavaskar is being kind. Last year he went to the camp, wasn't received at the airport, found few players interested in his advice and on checking out found he had to pay his own bill. Nice way to treat a legend. Last week humiliation came visiting. An Australian Cricket Board academy team, including Test players Matthew Elliot and Matthew Hayden, asked Bishen Bedi and S. Venkatraghavan (ignored by the BCCI) to teach it the art of tackling spin. Confronted with this Lele has only one answer, "It is embarrassing, we will think about it."

This board takes time to think. A cricket academy, for instance, has been discussed, debated, chewed on, but hasn't made it to an architect's office yet. Gavaskar, named chief director of the academy, says he told the BCCI eight months ago that the academy could be set up in Mumbai where he has a plot of land, but has not heard from it since. Even the hurriedly-constituted academy committee hasn't met yet. There is no excuse and Lele knows it: "We are slow, I agree."

Sometimes the board is plain inactive, even when its image is tarnished. Last year, in an incident at a Mumbai cricketing establishment, two selectors were allegedly caught with a prostitute. Lele says he is aware of the incident, and even though it was apparently witnessed by a young Indian player no action was taken. Says the board secretary: "There was no proof." A BCCI official, echoing a most disturbing cynicism, says, "The board required their votes, so didn't do anything."

Perhaps such deviousness is exaggerated, but the BCCI's reputation is unbecoming. Even its relationship with players is archaic: in the West players speak their mind about officialdom, in India players live in fear of the BCCI. Problems abound in Indian cricket, yet when last did a player openly criticise the BCCI? He won't for he has too much to lose. Paid Rs 90,000 per one-day match (and they play 30-odd matches a year), Rs 1.25 lakh per Test, not to mention the personal sponsorships they enjoy when playing for India, speaking out would mean putting all this at risk. Even Sachin Tendulkar, king of the game, is wary. Last year he reportedly twice walked out of selection meetings. Yet when some Indian players told him, "Don't back down, they can't touch you," Tendulkar was unconvinced. The BCCI's omnipotence was driven home while researching this story: almost all the people -- players, former players, officials -- that India Today spoke to wished to remain unidentified.

There is a hopelessness about Indian cricket. While we deliberate endlessly over silly businesses like who will be the next tour manager (who will get drunk and be carried to his room like has happened with some managers), other nations are galloping ahead. The South African board sends its staff for "Vision Seminars"; Sri Lanka, hoping to become a dominant Test nation, has a project named Cricket 2000; in England, aware of the potential of college cricket, four to five university-academies are on the anvil.

India needs to wake up and smell the coffee. It's no good Lele saying "international cricket is overlapping with domestic cricket" and leave it at that. It's unacceptable that BCCI officials should be involved with tamasha matches in Doha when there is an obvious conflict of interest. Even a man who can read calendars correctly so the team arrives enough in advance for a tournament can't be found. Someone has to think cricket. "Yes, yes," says Lele. "Such a committee is on the anvil. It will look after cricketing aspects."