In the history of Indian cricket, three days are considered to be epochal — June 25, 1983, when India won the World Cup for the first time; March 10, 1985 — when India under the captaincy of Sunil Gavaskar defeated Pakistan to win the Benson & Hedges World Championship of Cricket in Australia and April 2, 2011 — when MS Dhoni’s brigade annexed the 50-over World Cup for the second occasion.
But the significance of these three days will certainly pale in comparison to July 18, 2016. Never before has Indian cricket, albeit the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), been jolted the way the Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice TS Thakur and FM Ibrahim Kalifulla has done.
Succinctly put, they turned the world of BCCI upside down.
In fact, it can be safely said that Justices Thakur and Kalifulla have constructed the modern template of how sports administration in the country should be conducted. Based on the decisions given by the bench, there will be other sports bodies who will seek refuge with the Apex Court after having been ruled for ages by people who have no idea about how sports should be run.
Some of the decisions — no one can occupy an executive position in the BCCI after reaching 70 years of age, no central or state minister can be an office-bearer of BCCI or any of its affiliated units and after three years every executive will have a cooling off period for the same length — are game changers.
People like Sharad Pawar, N Srinivasan, Farooq Abdullah and Niranjan Shah will now have to consider that they have been clean bowled. It also means that despite being the kingmaker within the BCCI, the innings which Arun Jaitley had been planning to play has also been cut short.
With BCCI not wanting to appeal the decisions of the Supreme Court, its affiliated units will also have to follow suit. Under the circumstances, the Orissa Cricket Association (OCA) will also have to review its position. OCA secretary Asirbad Behera has been holding on to that post for more than a decade now. Behera and with him OCA president Ranjib Biswal will have to weigh their options, which might not be too many. Every change heralds a new era.
Hopefully, these forced changes will lift Indian cricket from administrative stagnation, amid allegations of corruption, favouritism and betting, in which it has been stuck for many years.
The apathy about Indian sports is that for long now, it has been ruled by people who have no sporting background. The ideal example of this being N Ramachandran, the president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) as well as the Squash Federation of India.
No one knows which sport he played, his claim to fame being that he is the brother of former disgraced BCCI chief N Srinivasan and is close to some of the top BJP leaders. A similar example is Hockey India (HI) president Narinder Batra, again a man without any proper hockey-playing credentials. With two non-sporting persons heading two major sports bodies, it is not surprising that India, boasting of a billion-plus people, is a back-bencher in the sporting world.
There is, however, a little confusion about one recommendation of the Supreme Court bench. It has said that the BCCI and its affiliated units should have more former cricketers in its administrative roles. The apex court has not defined ‘former’ as to whether the individual should be a former club, state or national level cricketer.
Definitely, some of the more dubious characters, people who detest vacating their chairs, could take advantage of this ruling. They will have the wherewithal to prove that they have played some sort of club cricket, at least, and they have the right to occupy an administrative post.
But as of now, the BCCI has been comprehensively bowled by the Supreme Court googly. The Justice Mukul Mudgal and Justice RM Lodha-led panel, who started the cleansing process, would stand vindicated now. After all, they have forever etched their names in the history of Indian cricket. And that too, without facing a ball.
