For Indian cricket board, fear is the key

Rohit Mahajan

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 2

The fear of the law continues to prompt changes in the Indian cricket board (BCCI).

Within six months, the Justice Lodha Committee, appointed by the Supreme Court to examine and reform the functioning of the BCCI, will recommend changes to the BCCI’s constitution and manner of functioning.

The BCCI officials, meanwhile, are trying to bring in some changes to the BCCI, to win brownie points for themselves, and perhaps to also convince Justice Lodha and the Supreme Court that they are sincere about changing the conflict-ridden, self-interest-driven BCCI.

The BCCI on Sunday said it will put in place a Player Agent Accreditation System to ensure that those handling the cricketers’ commercial interests are bound by a code of conduct. “In order to make the structure thorough enough and to ensure that player agents are bound by the set of laws and the code of conduct, a thorough and extensive Player Agent Accreditation System would be in place soon,” BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya said in statement today.

It’s a welcome step, as the BCCI is completely out of tune with the modern notions of accountability, openness and good corporate practices. Over the past few days, the BCCI has announced several measures in order to make its functioning more transparent; one important step was to ask its officials to sign an undertaking that they were not in a position of conflict of interest as BCCI officials.

Last month, the Justice Lodha Committee handed out very strong punishments to Gurunath Meiyappan, Raj Kundra and their IPL teams, Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, for their role in the 2013 IPL spot-fixing and betting scandal.

In January, the Supreme Court had asked the Justice Lodha Committee to, among other things, make “amendments considered necessary to the memorandum of association of the BCCI and the prevalent rules and regulations for streamlining the conduct of elections to different posts/officers”.

The Supreme Court also said that the Committee could make “any other recommendation with or without suitable amendment of the relevant Rules and Regulations, which the Committee may consider necessary to make with a view to preventing sporting frauds, conflict of interests, streamlining the working of BCCI to make it more responsive to the expectations of the public at large and to bring transparency in practices and procedures followed by BCCI”.

The Justice Lodha Committee, as is clear from its exemplary judgement in the spot-fixing and betting scandal, is very serious about its job. This has made the BCCI’s officials, hitherto hard-bitten and impervious to criticism, nervous.

The BCCI has existed for over 85 years, and its history shows that it is run like a fiefdom by its officials. It’s very common to see officials in it who have been at the top in various associations for 25-40 years. Before the Supreme Court struck fear into their hearts, the BCCI officials have rarely displayed any sense of accountability and responsibility. Those very officials have now launched this sudden spurt of reforms. This suggests that what some term as judicial “overreach”, while not ideal, is a necessity if sports institutions are to be cleansed.