Indian cricket administration and their baseless resistance taking the game down

Indian cricket administration and their baseless resistance taking the game down

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And here comes another resistance - BCCI doesn’t want to play Day-Night Test against Australia in the following summer and this came without any valid reason. While it would have been appreciated if there was any logic to the same, the problem actually lies in the blatant lack of foresight.

Cricket administration in India, or the entire world for that matter, for long, was managed by people those who have very limited ambition, serving usually in honorary capacities and concerned chiefly to inure cricket against change rather than to enact it. In the film “Death of a Gentleman” - directed by two fantastic cricket writers - Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber - the duo depicted beautifully how the game is slowly moving away from a mythical golden age because of the ego of the administrators. 

And as Gideon Haigh, someone who has the bird's eye view of cricket administration and the best person to talk about the business and politics in the sport, explained in his thought-provoking essay for the Cricket Monthly three years back, “Democratic principles apply only loosely, systems for election and/or government appointment varying from place to place, strongly weighted to incumbents, with authority heavily vested in those at the heads of boards. There is a little tradition of executive power. The biggest of all the world's cricket bodies, the BCCI, still has a president, a treasurer, and a secretary, just like a giant club. Gilles Clarke, the ECB's president, still affects a certain noblesse oblige.”

And this is exactly the reason why the BCCI - despite being the richest board in the world by a daylight difference - couldn’t exactly be the pioneer they could actually have been. The lack of foresight by some administrators in the country has been a long-standing problem and they have taken it as a principle that not accepting any reformation at the beginning is the best way to showcase their power. However, if anything, it has gone on to become the contours of archaic oligarchy.

While the BCCI finally embraced T20 cricket in a big way by introducing the Indian Premier League, it should be remembered that they were the first full-member not to accept the format back in the days and also sent a second-string team to the inaugural T20 World Cup. While it was that time of the millennium when smart ideas like T20 sold like nothing else, the BCCI, like that age-old grand-fatherly thinking, opposed the idea big-time. However, thanks to that glorious night at the Wanderers, the Lalit Modi brainchild kicked off in a way unimaginable and went on to become the golden goose that it is today. In spite of that, the hypocrisy of the opposition was very hard to miss. The same happened in the adaptation of Decision Review System as well and after endless round of discussion, they finally accepted it towards the end of 2016.

However, it was not the case always. When the subcontinent hosted its second World Cup in 1996, WorldTel paid $10 million for the TV rights in the aftermath of the economic liberalization in 1991 thanks to the larger foresight of late Jagmohan Dalmiya, then president of the BCCI. While the country had some able and well-educated officials to manage its cricket, it was the Marwari businessman from Kolkata, who created a flowchart that was never seen before. Be it treasurer, secretary or president, Dalmiya’s was the firm hand on Indian cricket’s rise to the sky and until the advent of politicians in the sports administration, he took the Indian cricket from the surface urbanity to a position that everyone in the country loved the game. 

However, administrators after Dalmiya couldn’t follow the same steam. Some of them talked a better sport - read Lalit Modi and Sourav Ganguly - but in all pragmatic thing, they just stood on the foundation that the “Machiavelli of Indian cricket” had built on the back of his larger foresight back in the days of TV rights distribution. 

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The country’s cricket took a backseat when in 2004, Sharad Pawar, the then Union agriculture minister, battled with Ranbir Singh Mahendra for the board president’s post and it eventually needed Pawar’s casting vote to decide. And by the time, Pawar roped in Inderjit Singh Bindra to save himself from the Dalmiya camp - a camp to which Bindra belonged in the past - the priorities had changed, which was not cricket and that resulted in smart ideas not seeing the light of day in the cricketing landscape in the country. Administrations following that just took over the mantle forward and while they were responsible for making BCCI richer day by day, that hardly came up with any rational ideas to change the system. The establishment of Committee of Administrators (CoA) by the apex court of the land following the sacking of Anurag Thakur and Ajay Shirke in early 2017 didn't help the cause either.

While it is an accepted fact that Test cricket needs to undergo serious change and the Day-Night Test is a way forward for the same, the BCCI is not doing any good by stopping it from prospering. Let’s deviate from this and come back to the ego again. India replaced their last four-match Test and five-match ODI series against South Africa with three Tests and six ODIs. Reason? Well, allegedly the reason for this can be attributed to Haroon Lorgat, the former chief executive of Cricket South Africa, not being in the same tent as the BCCI and openly blasted them for the big-three governance model in the past, which raises a bigger question on priorities in the game. If that was not enough, India have now decided not to play a Test series in New Zealand because it was "financially not viable". 

Come and try to explain the importance of Test cricket in front of the new generation as many times as you can and it is apparent that you will end up looking like a fool and also when you try consoling yourselves as much as you can, you will end up accepting that there is a genuine fear for the future of the format. And consequently, when the BCCI decided to defy a series of proposals to restructure Test cricket at ICC's annual conference back in 2016, it was only rightfully termed as “regressive”. And when the D/N Test concept is slowly kicking off and garnering popularity among the masses, the custodians of cricket in the country now have made it a prerogative to oppose it while it should have been the other way around, especially considering the numbers of people turn up to watch a Test match in India. 

Venues like Nagpur or Mohali for that matter always throws up empty stands and ask any Test cricketer, it couldn’t have been more depressing to see. Take Australia’s new customary Adelaide Pink Ball Test for that matter and it was quite evident that where the step could lead India. India’s history of Test cricket may not have been too overwhelming, it is certain that it has one soul thanks to some of the exemplary cricketers and it will not die if we can serve the platter better. 

If the 1998 Chennai Test against Australia made a precedent for the fans to throng venues day in and day out to be wowed by a certain Sachin Tendulkar, then the magic of Kolkata 2001 reaffirmed that love for the Test cricket. But the busier lifestyle in the corporates means Test cricket is going through an acid test and it only needed a revolutionary step to save it from losing its charm, at least from the fans’ consciousness. 

But, to make the matters more interesting, India, rather the new India under Virat Kohli, has gotten the best next generation of Test cricketers as their core and players such as Virat Kohli, R Ashwin, and Ajinkya Rahane are on right course to creating a legacy for the generation to come. And that’s exactly the reason why it couldn’t have been a better time than now to host one Test match where people would happily throng to the venue after wrapping up their work to catch up a session or two. Rather than doing that happily, the board is not even ready to play one D/N Test in abroad and if that is not regressive, then what is? 

And I have reached the conclusion without even touching the Lodha committee which will take an entire page for itself when the history of Indian cricket will be written. And, one thing is quite evident that the chain of events and decisions are not making any good precedent. If you want to be the leader, you should act like one and then you can only ensure a bountiful future for the sport. Baseless resistance doesn't help anyone.

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