DNA Edit: Rap on the knuckles

It might have been long in the coming but comeuppance has finally caught up with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The antitrust regulator, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), has levied a fine of Rs 52.24 crore on the cricketing body on charges of abusing its dominant position by stonewalling access to other entities looking to organise private domestic cricketing ventures. The CCI quite rightly held that the BCCI’s restriction on players playing for other domestic professional leagues other than the Indian Premier League (IPL) was not legitimately interlinked with advancing the interests of the game, and that the BCCI ought to take steps that encourage instead of impeding competition within the game. That seems to be a tall order given the history of the BCCI replete as it is with garden-variety malfeasance to power-brokering of the cut-throat kind.

For decades now, the BCCI has been lording over the massive cricket economy of India, unduly extracting a lofty premium from the sale of media rights over cricket matches being held in India as well as overseas. The BCCI management has been rent with fiscal corruption, mismanagement and round-tripping of funds. Under different satraps, the cricketing body has been manipulated into doing the bidding of its masters than serving the larger cause of cricket in India. The state is such that powers-that-be have steadfastly refused to vacate their chairs even when the Lodha committee took it upon itself to clean the Augean stables of the BCCI. Recently, amicus curiae Gopal Subramanium revealed to the SC that the BCCI treasurer Anirudh Chaudhary had gone to the extent of issuing death threats to the CFO Santosh Rangnekar on three separate occasions. Meanwhile, the game suffers.