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SPORTS, CRICKET
Blind Alley
During
it's darkest days, the BCCI produces a document which only placates the
government but holds out no hope for the game itself
Someone
has sent a message to Ajay Jadeja, but used a very strange medium indeed.
The words match-fixer have been scratched on to the bonnet of his Mitsubishi
Lancer and there they will remain until a garage gets to work on it. Then
there is the BCCI's own vehicle, the game of cricket in India. In the
aftermath of Bookiegate, its image has not only been tainted but wrecked
beyond repair. Strangely enough, the men at the helm think that all it
needs is a little touch-up job. Or at least that's what it seems if the
board's Vision 2000 statement, presented to the Government this week,
is anything to go by.
The 25-page
document, three-odd months in the making, was supposed to show the way
to a brave, new, scam-free future for Indian cricket. Instead it has turned
out to be nothing but an amateurish reprise of old programmes and platitudes,
for example, "Cricket is a valued part of India's heritage and way
of life." Most of the items on the board's eight-point "action
plan" -- graded payments, performance-related salaries, a fitness
panel -- have been aired before but, seasons later, have still to be ratified.
Unless the setting up of a website and introduction of video feedback
system approximately 10 years after the rest of the world are considered
radical. There is not even a whisper of the professionalisation of the
administration of the game; under a host of "honorary" officials
serving endless terms, profits have skyrocketed and results have nosedived
because planning and foresight remain abstract concepts; annual elections
and power struggles between regional factions take up officials' energies.
Naturally
the Delhi meeting was not about cricket at all, it served a different
purpose: it established a detente of sorts between the board and the Sports
Ministry after a week of sniping about autonomy and accountability. Former
cricketer and BJP MP Kirti Azad asked the Government to take over the
board, and a BCCI official shot back in private, "That's only because
he wanted to become North Zone selector and we didn't let him." Minister
of State for Sports Shahnawaz Hussain thundered that he was answerable
to Parliament. The board reminded him that Hussain did in fact send questions
across to Secretary J.Y. Lele's office which then formulated replies made
to Parliament.
When BCCI
President A.C. Muthiah and Union Sports Minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa
emerged from the meeting, they spoke in one peaceable voice about "greater
interaction." It was both an acceptance of the fact that the BCCI
cannot, for all its riches and autonomy, make a move without official
foreign exchange and External Affairs Ministry clearances from the Government
for tours and payments. The Government can place hurdles in the functioning
of the board but cannot, the BCCI's lawyers are cocksure, take complete
control of cricket.
According
to an official present at the meeting, while the BCCI has supported the
players in public, feelers will soon be sent to coach Kapil Dev and Mohammed
Azharuddin about standing down as gracefully as possible in the circumstances.
India's next coach, he says, should come from overseas in keeping with
world wide trends. It is a quid pro quo of sorts: the board gives an angry
public a few victims, the Government urges the CBI to step up the pace
of investigation, which should reduce "personal harassment"
and "international badnami" (loss of face) against BCCI office
bearers and the team in general. The end game to cricket's crisis has
begun with preservation of status quo within the board and identification
of the fall guys outside it. Vision 2000 is about vision of a very different
kind, the kind called myopia.
-Sharda
Ugra
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