dna edit: Taking politics out of cricket
The only way to clean up the sport is to give its administration over to professionals.
India’s two favourite sports of politics and cricket have collided in a depressingly inevitable train wreck. As N Srinivasan clings to his position, the will they, won’t they drama of various politicians doubling as cricket satraps - from Arun Jaitley to Rajiv Shukla, from Narendra Modi to Farooq Abdullah - plays out along familiar lines. First came the studied silence, then the platitudes, and now, finally bowing to public pressure, statements against the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president. It is a progression of events we have seen far too often in the context of political scandals. And it underscores — yet again — the extent to which Indian cricket and politics are entwined, to the former’s detriment.Consider the BCCI’s sins of omission and commission. Conflict of interest ranks at the top of the list; it runs rampant in the IPL. The board president owns an IPL franchise, one of his franchise’s brand ambassadors, K Srikkanth, pulled double duty as chairman of the selection committee and a leading Indian commentator is a member of the IPL governing council and board appointee shoehorned into every broadcast deal involving the Indian team.Many of the same politicians-cum-cricket administrators who are decrying this now, voted to amend the BCCI constitution in 2008 to allow administrators to have commercial interests in the IPL and Champions League. Conflict of interest, after all, is something politicians are intimately familiar with, from Pawan Bhansal to Dayanidhi Maran. And the irony of Sharad Pawar lining up against Srinivasan while stating that spot-fixing wouldn’t have happened during his tenure as BCCI chief — at a time when the NCP has closed ranks around its scam-tainted Maharashtra minister of state for transport Gulabrao Deokar, refusing calls for his resignation — is morbidly amusing.The spot-fixing in particular and the IPL in general should be thoroughly investigated by an external agency as former BCCI president Shashank Manohar has suggested. That is a no-brainer. But it is not enough. As long as political culture continues to inform cricket administration, the sport will continue to suffer. It is time to erect a firewall between the two and give the sport’s running over to paid professionals. India is cricket’s global superpower. The hubris of money must not overpower its responsibility to the sport.