Bhubaneswar: If one cannot become king by certain compulsions, he or she may choose to become kingmaker using the loopholes in the system and be in the thick of things. A similar saga is being witnessed in the Board of Cobntrol for Cricket in India (BCCI).
It is the honourable Supreme Court which pulled the strings of the Indian cricket board when things went awry. At that juncture, the parent body of Indian cricket was muddled in rampant corruption which came to light with the arrest of Gurunath Meiyappan, the Team Principal of the IPL franchisee Chennai Super Kings. Meiyappan was accused of betting — which is illegal in India — soon after the Indian Premier League VI was over in 2013.
Meiyappan, the son-in-law of Tamil Nadu strongman and former BCCI president Narayanswamy Srinivasan, was subsequently banned for life by the board.
However, that didn’t dent Srinivasan’s reputation in the board’s power corridors despite the court barring him and many other board mandarins to be in ‘power that be’ of the BCCI by bringing in constitutional changes through Justice RM Lodha recommendations.
Lodha recommendations barred Srinivasan, Niranjan Shah, Sharad Pawar and several other top-notch administrators to stay in power. But, it didn’t deter few of these mandarins to keep power through backdoor till date, and it will continue in a refurbished scenario too.
It’s still not clear how things will pan out later this month — when the elections of state associations are scheduled to take place — but Srinivasan, Shah and few others are sure to have emerged kingmakers after having to relinquish the ‘king’s throne.’
Shah, who has been the sole decision maker in the Saurashtra Cricket Association (SCA), has made his cricketer son Jaidev as the SCA president in the just-concluded AGM of the state body.
Shah’s contemporary and former board president Srinivasan seems to be following suit by nominating his daughter Rupa Gurunath (also wife of betting-accused Gurunath Meiyappan) for the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association’s (TNCA) top post in the election to be held September 27.
Much younger in age and experience, Union Minister Anurag Thakur also sought to bypass the recommendation to be in power — by making his brother Arun the chief of Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA).
Significantly, the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) which is headed by former India captain Sourav Ganguly, has also drafted in Ganguly’s uncle Devashish Ganguly in the panel for the treasurer’s post. Ganguly can only stay as the president of the state body till July 2020. Post July, the Prince of Kolkata will have to go for a ‘cooling off’ period of three years, according to the recommendations.
With the BCCI Annual General Meeting slated for October 22, the state associations will have to finish their election formalities by September 28 — 21 days ahead of the BCCI elections.
Now, it remains to be seen how many officials keep powers with themselves in the states by putting up candidates from within their families. It’s a wait-and-watch situation.