Shastri flays pitch critics

Rohit Mahajan

Tribune News Service

Nagpur, November 29

Shashank Manohar, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president, has performed a very remarkable feat. He heads the most plutocratic sports association in the country (if not the world), but he’s suddenly emerged as a revolutionary socialist. Manohar has come up with a remarkable, revolutionary slogan about the inequities in the International Cricket Council (ICC), of which he is the chairman. He has spoken very principled, and very populist, words: “You cannot make the poor poorer and the rich richer.”

Last year, the cricket boards of India, England and Australia formed a clique, the Big 3, within the ICC, assuring themselves of a bigger share of the ICC’s revenues and executive power. Three days ago, Manohar said he was opposed to the concept of the Big 3. He said he didn’t agree with “the three major countries bullying the ICC”.

This has evoked a very appreciative reaction - the cricket boards of South Africa, Sri Lanka and Pakistan have spoken strongly to support Manohar’s views. In England, the former captain and respected commentator on the game, Mike Brearley, said: “One of the things we said about the ICC last year was that it has to have a proper independent review. But this is a review from the inside, which is good.”

Missteps

So, Manohar has won brownie points from around the world. This places him on a moral high ground, as a possible agent of change and clean-up. It would be instructive to examine how things go in his own territory, the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA), which has its headquarters here in Nagpur.

Three major criticisms can be levelled at Manohar as an administrator.

One, his father (VR Manohar) was the president of the VCA before him, and his son (Adwait Manohar) is now in the executive committee of the VCA. Two, Manohar was part of the constitutional review committee that changed a key BCCI rule that had been designed to prevent conflict of interest in the BCCI. Three, he must share the blame for the foreign exchange violations that occurred in the IPL when he was president; Lalit Modi alone can’t be held accountable for them.

The criticism that would have the most salience among the cricket fans, though, is regarding the hideous pitch politics he was part of in 2004, when India played Australia here in a Test. Manohar was part of the Sharad Pawar camp in the BCCI; Pawar had been beaten by Jagmohan Dalmiya in the BCCI elections. Thus, to spite Dalmiya (and Sourav Ganguly, the Bengali captain of India), a green pitch was provided for the Test. It suited Australia’s pace bowlers more, and despite Ganguly’s requests, the grass wasn’t mowed. Ganguly withdrew from the match, and India lost the match and the series.

Home truths

These points of criticism don’t seem to matter in the VCA - here he enjoys a huge support. “He’s a man of integrity. When he became the BCCI president the first time (2008), he said he would resign as VCA president,” said a VCA insider, who didn’t wish to be named. “However, the members did not allow him to resign.” A VCA official says that it is one of the best administrated associations in the country. He points to two important initiatives taken by Manohar over the last seven years — one is the BCCI’s Umpires Academy and the second is the VCA’s Junior Academy. These are impressive facilities, located in the old VCA Stadium in the city.

“These initiatives were taken by him,” says an official. “The Umpires Academy is doing extremely useful work, monitoring matches, training umpires and video analysts.”

He says that the new VCA stadium at Jamtha was built at a cost of Rs 80 crore. “Many associations have spent Rs 100 to Rs 200 crore in just renovating their stadium,” he says. “The VCA has a corpus of Rs 150 crore. Now think of Delhi (DDCA), which is bankrupt!”

Conflict of interest is something Manohar wants to stamp out of the VCA. Pravin Hingnikar, the curator at Jamtha, had to go because he also runs a cricket academy. “I was asked by Mr Manohar whether I wanted to continue with the VCA,” he says. “I opted to not continue because I have my own academy.” Adwait Manohar quit the BCCI’s marketing and legal committee the day his father became the BCCI president.

Criticism

Manohar’s critics, who speak in muted voices, say that he’s making the show of a clean-up because he’s nervous about the Justice Lodha Committee, appointed by the Supreme Court to clean up the BCCI. “There was conflict of interest in the VCA earlier too, so why has he woken up only now?” asks a VCA insider. “The VCA is like his fiefdom, inherited by one generation from the other. He’s the same man who caused a series defeat to India because of the BCCI’s politics in 2004.”

These are serious charges, and they do cast Manohar in a bad light.

But in his second innings as BCCI president, can Manohar live up to the promise he’s made? It’s not quite certain he can. “In 2017, his term will end,” says a supporter. “The BCCI is formed of state associations which don’t have uniform rules — some are societies and some are companies. It’s a very difficult job to clean them up. But in the VCA at least, there’s transparency and efficiency.”