Posts Tagged ‘BCCI’

Modi maligning BCCI’s image: Board, but could he have done it alone?

Sport and controversies have gone hand-in-glove, and cricket has had its fair share. Yet, the amount of filth that has emanated from the IPL mess in a span of a couple of months, has probably covered the sport with enough controversy to last a life-time.

And they say that it is only the tip of the iceberg, with the recent controversies like the one involving Sharad Pawar, Supriya Sule and Chirayu Amin also revealing the glacial body further.

At the outset, it was a simple case of the aforementioned being part owners of an IPL franchise if they had gone on to win the bid. Thankfully for them, they did not, beaten hollow by the Sahara Group. But had they gone on to own the Pune franchise, it would have meant that at least two of the co-owners of the side would have been in a similar situation as N Srinivasan; conflict of interest.

Not so long ago, Sunil Gavaskar had had to resign from the ICC as its cricket committee chairman when that role and his media commitments were found to be in direct conflict. As a commentator and columnist, Gavaskar could wield his straight-forward talking against those who were in the ICC, as umpires, match referees or any other official position, and that had not gone down too well with the ICC.

If that was a conflict of interest, this is many, many times over. There is an obvious detesting for the manner in which Modi, to my mind, has attempted to mess the sport up with his so-called visionary ideas. However, there cannot be too much doubt that owning or part-owning of IPL teams by IPL Governing Council members or even the members of the board can hardly be allowed. Even before he became the interim chairman, Amin was the Governing Council member, and for him to own a franchise would have brought about only more trouble.

The only result out of the same would be more allegations ranging from nepotism to the ones that Modi has brought about on Srinivasan in the recent times. More mud-slinging, more bad press and more erosion of brand Indian cricket. The latest in this war of words is the news that Manohar has come out in the defence of his interim chief and lashed out at Modi for ‘maligning’ the Board’s image.

Couldn’t be more true, except that Modi couldn’t have done it alone. He could never have done it alone.

Get the UN to intervene between India and Sri Lanka!

The Indian cricketers deserve the break. So do the viewers. Most importantly, we need our break from those repetitive and rather monotonous games against BCCI’s new favourite cricket board, Sri Lanka.

I know for a fact that Lalit Modi was (is?) a part of the marketing committee of the BCCI. And despite all the recent shenanigans and charges and show cause notices, I also believe that he is one of the smarter marketing men around. The last I heard, Philip Kotler had been planning to co-author a revised marketing journal with Modi. Probably I am just kidding. But you get the gist.

So, despite his presence as the marketing strategy guy, what I have failed to understand is the rationale behind allowing Team India to play every other series against Sri Lanka. Is it that revenue-churning for the BCCI? That would certainly be a surprise to me because most of those cricket fans that I know of have already begun to groan in the sheer anticipation of watching the two shades of blue fight it out again.

Ever since the turn of 2008, India has played in 14 ODI series. This figure also includes the Champions Trophy last year. And seven out of those 14 tournaments have seen India play Sri Lanka! So, by no means was I exaggerating when I used the words ‘every other tournament’ earlier.

And by the end of July this year, if the BCCI has its way, the two teams would have been involved in three more such series, that includes a tri-series with Zimbabwe as the third side, an Asia Cup with Pakistan and Bangladesh and then, in all probability, a bilateral, tour of Sri Lanka (which I assume, should include some Tests, ODIs and T20Is).

Why would you not want to play England, New Zealand or West Indies instead? The reason, I guess, lies in the fact that most of the sides freeze their time-tables way before hand, unlike the BCCI, which has no qualms in not only not doing so, but also modifying or cancelling it at their own whims and fancies.

For some strange reason, BCCI’s marketing/scheduling committee has had a seven ODI series against Australia in successive years. And on both occasions in India. And unless the Cricket Australia agrees to the latest proposal to convert it into a couple of Tests and three ODIs sent out by BCCI, the Indians will be playing Australia in that seven ODI series again, after having lost to them last year. At least, in this case, the Board should earn a lot of the deal, but will the cows deliver enough milk over sustained periods of time is a big question.

My guess is that ‘viewer discretion’ would soon need to be recommended. Something of the sort, ‘Warning, you are about to watch India play Sri Lanka in the 1054th ODI between the two sides this year. Viewer discretion advised for those with any strands remaining on their head’.

Surprised to see Nehra, Yuvraj’s denial after brawl incident

By Suneer Chowdhary

Now that is what one calls adding salts to the wounds. And insult to injury. The question, though, is whose injury; fans or the players themselves?

At the outset, there is no stopping from a side that has lost the tournament, to go clubbing. Failures in examination never stopped me from getting out, and nor did a disappointment in my corporate life mean that I was expected to shut myself in a pigeon-hole and sulk. In fact, these were the times when one feels the need to get the episode leading to the frustrations, out and there can hardly be a stopper on that.

Getting involved in a brawl in the pub, is a different story altogether. And making it look like a figment of someone’s imagination and exclaiming, ‘If somebody is saying behind me that somebody tore my shirt then what can I say. I didn’t even take any shirt to West Indies. I had taken only T-shirts,’ is nothing short of frivolous.

Long ago, Ricky Ponting had had entered into a similar brawl whilst in a discotheque in India. And the show had repeated itself in Australia as well, and on both occasions, the player had been castigated by the media for his involvement. There was a reasonably healthy debate on whether a player, with a penchant to tipple as regularly as Ponting, and then get involved with the media glare for all the wrong reasons, deserved to be thought of as the future captain.

Fortunately, there has been no such report that the brawl occurred thanks to an inebriated cause. However, the least that those involved could have done when the apparent seeds for the brawl were being sowed by those ‘fans’ who began to taunt the Indian team is to immediately report the matter to the ones in-charge; the last I heard, pubs and clubs do have their own, internal security to keep a check on matters, exactly of this nature.

Going back to the point about the frivolous nature of comments that seem to have come out of the Indian players, one almost got the sense that they thought that the worst that could come out of the issue was a private reprimand. Shashank Manohar seems to have caught them on the wrong foot, given than both, Yuvraj Singh and Ashish Nehra had categorically denied the incident. Not too many out of those who were there expected the BCCI to send them a show cause notice, least of all, make an announcement about the same to the media.

What the show cause notice means is that BCCI, after having done their research has come to the conclusion that the players were actually involved in the aforesaid issue, and that contradicts what the cricketers have already claimed so far. At least Nehra can claim to have been forced into a Catch 22 situation; accepting it in front of the probing media without the BCCI knowing about it would have almost certainly angered the ‘Big Brother’.

But Yuvraj’s tweet on Twitter was an unforced error. And a clear indication of the fact that nothing could go wrong; with the ‘at-best-a-quiet-warning’ syndrome.

There are also rumours that the Indian team may drop some of these players who were involved in that squabble. Now, that would be sad given that the side has, generally, been a well-mannered one. The signs, though, are there that the board could do well to control some of the cricketers on the field of play, and off it as well; not too many would want the ‘Ugly Aussie’ refrain to be associated with the Indian cricketers.

Media should show equal responsibility as BCCI

It had taken a series loss to New Zealand and a match’s defeat against Australia in 2002-03 for the irate fans back home to burn those effigies and exhibit the other forms of ‘Public Display of Anger’. This time around, the response to the two successive ousters from World T20s in the Super Eight stage has been much more mild.

Despite the angst that many of the cricket fans have expressed, there haven’t been any, over-the-top reactions worth mentioning. Whether, that is due to the maturing Indian cricket fan or an indifferent one, we shall never know, but my surmise is that the reason could tend more towards latter.

That is, of course, if you discount the report in one of the leading newspaper of the sacking of the Indian captain from the shorter formats of the game. Both, the ODIs and the T20 Internationals that is. It was seven in the morning when I read this, and had to, both, rub my eyes again and pinch myself awake from the lazy morning. This cannot be true.

So far, as it has turned out after that, the BCCI has come out, through Rajiv Shukla to deny that they have taken any such decision. And thankfully at that.

No, I am no big Dhoni-fan(atic). In fact, it was big surprise to hear him back the IPL right through the start of the tournament, and then raise the rightful issue of the IPL parties, at a very wrongful situation, of being knocked out of the tournament. There wasn’t too much doubt that the exhaustion due to the IPL and some really strange strategies by both, the selectors and Dhoni, had contributed more than its bit in leading to the ouster.

But, two wrongs never made a right. At this stage, the Indian cricket can only slip further into a quagmire if any such rash decision to oust the Indian captain was taken. For one, there are no viable replacements in the horizon – which, by itself is bad news – and the other, and more pertinent reason is that nothing could be more knee-jerk than blaming the captain in its entirety for what happened in the West Indies. As I said, the selectors and the players do have a lot of the blame to be shared.

Besides, a simple look at the record books will tell you of the man’s consistency at winning matches, both, at home and abroad. All of the aforementioned combine together to tell me that Dhoni should continue being at the saddle, and ignore the rest of the shenanigans.

What Dhoni cannot, however, ignore is his own body. It has been two years since, he has captained, been a frontline batsman and kept wickets in all the three formats of the game apart from the IPL. Despite all the milk and milkshakes that he had had in his earlier days, the burden has clearly begun to tell and it is only obvious. That, to me, could be the one reason why, Dhoni should decide on cutting his responsibilities short, and the two places I can see that happen is in the captaincy of the T20 version and wicket-keeping in both, ODIs and T20s.

Whether he will allow himself that luxury is a question-mark.