DDCA playing gentleman's game for sex and sleaze?

Sex, money and grabbing. The Delhi & District Cricket Association (DDCA) is in the news again.

It is only after Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's sensational claim on Tuesday that DDCA's top officials have allegedly been seeking sexual favours from a senior TV journalist's wife to field his son in a Delhi team, the issue has snowballed into a major controversy.

But why did DDCA not act when the same incidents were reported in 2007 and 2008? It was reported in 2007 and 2008 that a senior DDCA selector allegedly demanded sexual favour from a 13-year-old aspiring cricketer's mother to play the boy in a sub-junior team.

When the boy's father learnt about this, he hired a prostitute for Rs 5,000 and presented her as his wife. This, according to the boy's father, was far less an amount than what selectors demand.

Interestingly, during a selection trial of Delhi's sub-junior team in 2007, one of the selectors allegedly made vulgar advances towards the mothers of several young aspirants.

Having come to know about this, the father of this 13-year-old boy took the selector out for dinner, along with his wife. Midway, the father got an urgent call and left, asking his wife to drop the selector home. The mother and selector exchanged phone numbers and private dates before she returned. Soon, she allegedly obliged him to get her son into the team.

But it took this top selector one full year to eventually find out, till the time this boy came to Delhi's team trials in 2008, that the woman he had met and dated was not the boy's mother, but someone who had been paid to do a job!

However, no action was taken against this selector (who is still holding a top position in DDCA) even after the story was published.

In most of the age-group selection trials, many a DDCA selector and officials have been found offering a package deal to parents.

"The ongoing rate for an Under-14 team starts from Rs 4.5 lakh. It goes up to Rs 10 lakh if you want your son to play all the matches," said a senior DDCA official, on condition of anonymity.

In fact, it was only a few days back that a player was reportedly included in the Ranji team without the knowledge of any selectors despite the fact that he was not even in the list of the first 33. He eventually played for Delhi against Andhra in the one-dayer amidst murmurs about his selection.

Grabbing clubs
A letter of 2012, in possession of dna, clearly shows that Kirti Azad also pointed towards the nexus between the sports working committee (SWC) and sports secretary Sunil Dev to grab control of Delhi's cricket clubs.

"I wrote to Bansal and Khanna two years back, when Mr Jaitley was president, alleging that SWC elections are being manipulated by changing 'secretaries' of various clubs, particularly those belonging to PSU banks/institutions, by none other than Vinod Tihara (SWC convenor) and Dev. But like any other letter, I got no answer from anyone," said Azad.

In one such instance, club secretary of Youngster Club, DC Chaudhary, whose club was allegedly transferred illegally by Dev in 2009-10, even resorted to the extreme step of ending his life in 2014 (soon after Jaitley relinquished office) after DDCA's hostile takeover of his club by Dev and company. Chaudhary left a suicide note (copy is with dna), which is with the Delhi Police "urging DDCA top bosses to hand over his cricket club to his nephew Navin Chaudhary after his death".

Dev offered "no comments" on Tuesday.

Not just this, one of the audio clips, which was submitted to the Delhi Police (also with dna), clearly shows that a DDCA official allegedly demanding Rs 55 lakh from Chaudhary for returning the club.

dna learns that the Delhi Police have been investigating the case and have called Dev and company for several rounds of investigation.