Former officer bearers trying to control the DDCA through their family members, claims Bishan Singh Bedi

Bedi was always renowned for his principles and ideals even during his tenure as captain of the Indian cricket team and he became the first captain to concede an international cricket match when he recalled his batsmen from the crease and conceded the match in protest at the bowling of Sarfraz Nawaz who had bowled 4 bouncers in succession with not one being called wide by the umpires.

The Punjab-born bowler has been highly critical of Muttiah Muralitharan’s bowling action too as he called the off-spinner a "Sri Lankan bandit closing in on a dream artist called Shane Warne". But Bedi recently shed light on a more domestic concern, which was the irregularities in the functioning of the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA). Bedi claimed that former DDCA officials are trying to control the functioning of the DDCA through human proxies in the form of family members.

“Proxy is dead, long live proxy. In a nutshell that is how you can assess the situation. We need an honest environment, unfortunately that may not be the case. I am apprehensive about these former officer bearers trying to control the DDCA through their family members. I hope that members don’t succumb to the guile of former office bearers who want to push in their relatives and friends.

“I have been fighting this battle for 40 years and just when you thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, you see proxies in human form,” Bedi said during a press briefing on Sunday.

Bedi revealed that all this was being done after the Lodha Committee recommended three-year cooling-off period due to which officials couldn’t hold their posts’ for a longer period and hence have resorted to using human proxies. According to the final list of candidates revealed, at least 10 candidates for different posts are family members of former officials. Shashi Khanna, the wife of BCCI acting president and former DDCA vice-president CK Khanna, was in contention for the post of vice-president.

Bedi also questioned the intentions of candidates who were splashed lakhs of rupees on hosting dinner parties and concert nights for members of the DDCA.

“Huge sums are being spent by aspiring candidates and if you are investing so much money how will you recover this? What is it that attracts these candidates, who are spending so much money, to the DDCA? They have the purse to spend and members who I have spoken to seem to be swayed by the show of wealth and power of candidates. That is sad. We would want to see cricket taking prominence over everything else. My appeal to those contesting is to put cricket first,” Bedi added.

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