By Veturi Srivatsa, IANS
After the national selectors, it might be the turn of event management and sports management companies to take on the India cricket board. These companies could be hamstrung by the board’s move to register and license them as the board is in the process of formulating guidelines and the anti-corruption agency may well be asked to keep tabs on the agencies.
By registering with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the sports management companies can seek a role in the endorsement of the licensed products of the board so that they can work out a fair remuneration for their players, the board and themselves.
BCCI’s move to streamline the system comes after it suspected an unholy nexus between the selectors and some sports management companies. To end this unhealthy co-dependence it has decided to ask these companies to register with the board so that their activities can be monitored. The companies on their part are likely to resist the move as it might impinge on their freedom to operate in a free market.
As for the board’s decision to ask chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar to stop writing a column, it seems the objection is more because of its syndication through an agency that also manages the business affairs of some players currently in the Indian team.
Vengsarkar in his reply to the BCCI guidelines to the selectors is believed to have said he has been writing columns for a living for a decade and half and that he has only been analysing the game without commenting on individual players.
The board has decided to act after some state associations and players brought it to its notice how the selectors seem to be getting influenced by sports management companies, reflecting in the selection and omission of certain players.
BCCI doesn’t see it as a mere coincidence that the company that has skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni on its roster has also syndicated the chief selector’s newspaper column.
The selectors-management company association is nothing new as some players have in the past revealed in private how they were in the India squad for a consideration and a former chief selector and his colleague stated how a player tried to bribe them for his inclusion in the India A team.
The board’s stand then was that it could not take cognisance of unsubstantiated charges for want of incontrovertible proof. But it has now decided to take action on suspicion and circumstantial evidence.
The issue has cropped up afresh in the wake of chief selector Vengsarkar’s open defiance of the BCCI secretary’s diktat asking him to stop interacting with the media and to discontinue his newspaper column. The board is also miffed at a copy of the guidelines being sent to the offices of television channels and conveying to them that three selectors have threatened to quit.
When confronted, four selectors have told the board that they had no hand in leaking the guideline or sending out the threat to quit.
Interestingly two of the selectors, Ranjib Biswal (East Zone) and Sanjay Jagdale (Central) are board officials with voting rights while the selector from North Bhupinder Singh Sr and Vengsarkar are part the state associations. Only Venkatapathy Raju (South) is a selector by virtue of his being a Test player.
Vengsarkar is unhappy that he is being singled out while two other former cricketers also connected to the BCCI in different capacities — Technical Committee chairman Sunil Gavaskar and National Cricket Academy chairman Ravi Shastri — are allowed to write in newspapers.
The board’s contention is that there is no comparison between the chief selector and the other two former captains as they are with the BCCI in different capacities and are not part of the selection process.
Vengsarkar’s supporters, however, claim that Gavaskar’s critical remarks in his widely syndicated column on Dave Whatmore’s credentials to be India coach were far more motivated, influencing the eventual decision to dump the Australian, than the chief selector’s insipid observations.
Vengsarkar may be well aware that both Gavaskar and Shastri preferred their lucrative media commitments to the glamorous but thankless jobs of coach / manager / selector. It is altogether a different matter whether they should have shirked national responsibility, but they made no secret that if they were forced to choose between honorary board positions and their media work, they would opt for the latter.
The other two vexed issues in the guidelines are the one relating to the selectors camping in the dressing room during matches and the selectors’ role in the selection of the playing eleven on tours. Obviously, someone from inside the dressing room complained to BCCI about the selectors’ presence in the dressing room and the team management has serious reservation about selectors trying to act big on tours.
While one of the dailies that carries Vengsarkar’s column insists it will continue to publish it and the chief selector is in no mood to stop writing, the board officials have left it to their chief Sharad Pawar to take the final call.
Certainly we have not heard the last of this controversy.
(Veturi Srivatsa is a senior editor at IANS. He can be contacted at [email protected])