Curious incident of legends's talk against Lodha panel

The Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) frenzied attempts to build public opinion through 'paid proxies' and junk the Supreme Court orders to implement sweeping reforms in the functioning of the sport's body, can best be described as desperation to avoid the inevitable.

This comes only days after BCCI's review petition, which audaciously called for recusal of Chief Justice of India TS Thakur due to his "prejudiced approach" against it, which is still lying in default at the Apex court's registry.

Instead of trying to correct and 'cure the defects' in the petition, the world's richest cricket board is trying to flagrantly use its 'money power' to create an atmosphere amongst the fans that the "game is going to die if the present set of office bearers are forced to vacate posts which they have held for decades".

The first such blatant defiance came from none other but the two Indian cricket legends, Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, during the course of first Test here.

Having been on the pay roll of BCCI for many years now, the two were only echoing the sentiments of another paid board employee Ravi Shastri, who termed the Justice Lodha Committee-suggested "three-year cooling off period" as something "which would refrain former cricketers from joining BCCI administration".

Of course in deference to democracy and the right to free speech and expression, no one is questioning these worthies' right to express their opinion in public, however, the question is why this has been done deliberately on the official broadcaster/ television platform whose commercial interests are inextricably linked with the fate of the current BCCI officials.

"This is like asking an employee about what he feels about his employer," says former India player Surinder Khanna, obviously hinting at the huge amount that these few selective ones are being doled out from the board coffers.

As per a recent estimate, Gavaskar and Shastri were paid around Rs 6 crore a year by BCCI on account of match commentary, managing IPL and Team India.

This was, in fact, more than what the board paid to two of its star players, MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli.

Shastri was till recently BCCI's team director and Gavaskar was also given charge of Indian Premier League operations by the Apex Court. Though, it was a different story how eyebrows were raised in cricketing circles when the former India skipper took an unprecedented decision to take IPL to a 'banned gulf territory'.

Kapil was the only exception to BCCI's paid staff, till he tendered an apology to the board.

"Why did they not raise their voice when the SC decision was announced many months back?" Asked SC counsel Rahul Mehra, adding: "I have no doubt that this is obstructing the administration of justice and calls for suo moto criminal contempt proceedings against all these BCCI actors including the top officials of BCCI."

Incidentally, out of 76 people who interacted with Justice Lodha Committee, only two former India players — Bishan Singh Bedi and Kirti Azad — are said to have furnished proof of the mismanagement, election fraud and perpetuation of various corrupt practices/conflict of interest, which makes BCCI an opaque organisation.

A senior Delhi & District Cricket Association member Sameer Bahadur, who has been battling corruption in the state body for many years, said, "Kapil knows how Haryana Cricket Association functions and we all know how he was made to apologise to BCCI before he was re-admitted in their good books."

False Propaganda

During the first Test between India and New Zealand here, a BCCI employee was pointing fingers at the Chief Justice of India. He said, "One should try and explore why only Justice Lodha is being asked to head every commission appointed by the Apex court?"

"Go and check how Justice Lodha is being made head of all the panels constituted by one particular bench," he kept repeating in what appeared like a blatant attempt to spread false propaganda amongst mediapersons here.
It is in public domain that retired Justice Lodha has been asked to look into the "multi-crore scam by Pearls Group and Medical Council of India facelift," apart from BCCI reforms, and questioning or not co-operating with an SC appointed panel amounts to nothing but contempt of the highest court in India.