BCCI's Shamelessness is a cause for its celebration | N.R.Mohanty

Published on 05-07-2008 In General

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BCCI's Shamelessness is a cause for its celebration

There is a saying that the more we seek glory in our past, the less secure we are about our present. This seems to be the case with our cricketing fraternity. The big hoopla about the world cup victory in 1983 only served to hide India's flop show in the next 25 years, in six world cups on the trot. Could it be then said that the silver-jubilee celebration was as much an ode to the triumph in 1983 as an elegy to the disaster in the aftermath?

It is sheer shamelessness of our cricket administration that instead of doing soul-searching about our successive failures, we have chosen to go on a world-wide blitz to highlight our lone success story in the world cup. The June 25, 1983 victory was no doubt a moment of glory when India defeated the West Indies, the then world champions, in a low-score contest. We must give Kapil's Devils their due for bringing down Clive Lloyd's Magnificent Eleven on to their knees.

But at the same time we must not forget that the same winter, barely a few months later, the same West Indies team traveled to India to play a one-day series and inflicted humiliating defeat on the world cup winning team by a clean 5-0 sweep. After the high of the world cup victory, the Indian team ought to have had the confidence to take on the West Indies on an equal footing. But the manner in which the newly-heralded lions were bearded in their own den only gave rise to the troubled feeling that the India's summer victory owed more to good luck than cricketing potency.

One wishes our Cricket Board had also highlighted this irony: that we defeated the world champions in the crunch world cup match, but a few months later we lost to them in not one, two or three but all five matches in the series. That would have shown our cricketing feat in perspective. If the Board wanted our youngsters to know about our grand achievement in 1983, as the 'defining moment of Indian cricket', it must not have stopped there. After all, the 'resurgence' of Indian cricket in the summer of 1983 was followed by the atrophy that continues even today. We need not remind the Board that India could not get past the league stage, to enter the elite eight in the last world cup.

But then the Board perhaps thinks that it must not spoil the party by highlighting the uncomfortable facts. That is the way all self-seeking individuals and institutions function. Why should the BCCI (Board of Control of Indian Cricket) be any different? One wonders why then the Indian Hockey Federation does not celebrate India's victory in the Hockey world cup in 1975? After all, a third of a century has passed; so what if India's standing in hockey has been going downhill since then. It should seek to drown the present woes by celebrating the past glory. If it hasn't done so, then it could be because its administration is not as shameless as its cricket counterpart, or could be that it is not sitting on a fortune as the BCCI does.

BCCI is indeed sitting on a fortune it does not know how to spend. When India won the World Cup in 1983, the BCCI was not that cash rich. As N K P Salve, the then BCCI president said, the BCCI was hard pressed to offer an award of even one lakh rupees for the world cup winning Indian team. But when he announced the award, he said recently, Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar persisted with him to increase the amount to two lakh rupees.

But it was beyond the BCCI's means. So it organized a Lata Mangeshkar concert to raise the additional money.

But gone are those days of modest means. The BCCI today is flush with money. It can now afford to pay a crore of rupees to a player to hit six sixes in an over. It can now spend a hundred crore to re-live the momentous achievement two and a half decade ago. In that sense, 1983 was a defining moment. It paved the way for the influx of huge money into the BCCI's treasury. And, not surprising, a large chunk of this money is spent not on the professional development of cricket, but on personal gratification of the Board officials. It is not enough to toast champagne in the country. The whole entourage, with family and all, must travel to the Lord's, the Mecca of cricket, to savour the glories of the past.

That explains why so much of political clout and corporate money is employed to secure a position in the Board. Lalu Yadav left no stone unturned to become the president of the Bihar Cricket Board. Buddhadev Bhattacharya, being a CPI (M) leader, did not want to be seen in awe of a bourgeois game like cricket, but he knew the importance of wielding influence over the cricket administration of West Bengal. So he backed his police commissioner for the coveted post.

These are the regional players. Those in the cushy seats at the centre of it are having greater stakes. And the saddest thing is that it is not the people who have been associated with the game of cricket in any way who are the big bosses of the cricket administration, either in the state or the all-India Board. It is either the men in power or the power-brokers. Today the Board is headed by admittedly the richest politician in the country, with a core team of lieutenants most of whom have a shady past.

Sharad Pawar & Co. has filed charges against the previous BCCI chief, Jagmohan Dalmia, for large-scale defalcation of the Board's money. Dalmia, who lorded over the Board for a long time after its transition from the cash-starved to cash-surplus status, has many skeletons in his cupboard. He may be lying low for some time, but there are reports that he is now flexing his muscles to re-enter the box to face the duel again.

In the dog-eat-dog world of competition for the hegemony over the BCCI, it will not be surprising if Dalmia, a man of huge resources, is able to emerge victorious again in the turf war with Pawar. If it happens, then Dalmia is bound to slap charges of misappropriation and defalcation of BCCI money against Pawar. But nothing is going to come out of it. Just as Dalmia would escape unscathed from the allegations, so will be his successor.

They are like the rival politicians who would vouch to expose each other, only for the public consumption. But behind the veil, they would toast each other as they know that only by remaining united can they protect their ill-gotten wealth.

Many enter the race of public office, the office of the political executive, as an investment to reap the benefits hundred-fold, if successful. The struggle for prized positions in the Cricket Board is no different. That explains why the political bigwigs and corporate honchos are working in tandem to get a share of the BCCI's largesse.

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