JAGMOHAN Dalmiya has won the battle that threatened his position as chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC), but Indian cricket emerges weaker not stronger after his fratricidal fracas with friend-turned-foe Inder Singh Bindra.
JAGMOHAN Dalmiya has won the battle that threatened his position as chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC), but Indian cricket emerges weaker not stronger after his fratricidal fracas with friend-turned-foe Inder Singh Bindra.
The net result of the sabre-rattling, politicking, innuendos, insinuations and allegations in the run-up to the November 6-7 AGM of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is already showing. The 30-strong board has split vertically, with close to 20 associations on Dalmiya's side and the remainder on Bindra's. And the impact of the groupism can be seen with the retention of the same "bunch of jokers" as selectors. "What could we do when we didn't have a majority," said Bindra as he emerged out of the AGM where he 'took up' the activities—some of them nocturnal—of two of the five wise men. The twosome, who have reportedly demanded bribes for selecting players, leaked selectorial deliberations, got into drunken brawls, and sought Sachin Tendulkar's ouster, were retained as a compromise after Dalmiya's aides ganged up to replace Bindra aide, M.P. Pandove, with Kirti Azad as the North Zone representative.
As the selectors flew to Mumbai over the weekend, BCCI president Raj Singh Dungarpur was firmly backing Sachin whose young side has a 5-3 showing against arch-rivals Pakistan. But wrote S.K. Sham in
The Sunday Observer : "(The) veiled suggestion that there is a move to bring back Azhar is not without any basis. Since Sachin took over, the powerful lobby that works from outside and whose core is formed by leading bookmakers have been finding access difficult." Not cricket? So wasn't anything you saw at the Taj Coromandel as BCCI bosses lunged lustily at naked power (see box).
As the two groups lobbied hard for the spoils of office, the cash-flush body (1996-97 surplus: Rs 33.40 crore) kept most important cricketing matters—pitches, domestic cricket—on hold. What went wrong with the "future of Indian cricket"?
Behind the breakup of the Dalmiya-Bindra combine is the usual saga of bristling egos and soaring ambitions. The twist to the tale is provided by the new players who call the shots in Indian cricket: TV moguls, sponsors, and PR types. "I won't say sponsors caused the rift, but they and their representatives certainly stoked the sparks between Dalmiya and Bindra into a wild fire," says BCCI vice-president Kamal Morarka, openly identified with the Dalmiya camp.
As the duo, who appeared set to dictate the game's global future following the rise of the subcontinent as an uber-power after the successful commercialisation of the 1996 World Cup, split acrimoniously, the question was elementary. "What happened? They seemed to be thick as thieves," asked
Mid-Day editor Ayaz Memon as Dalmiya and Bindra refused to acknowledge each other's presence as D-day dawned.
Mistrust set in. The high court appointed an 'observer'; the board sought the services of P. Chidambaram's wife Nalini as counsel. Little Lele, backed by Dalmiya, spoke of bugged hotel phones and anonymous faxes from the Gulf offering money. Congress MP Pinaki Mishra, a Bindra camp follower, said he was glad the battle turned personal: "This was the only way of cleansing the body of racketeers and backroom operators, and initiating meaningful debate." No such thing happened. Everybody was cashing the same stuff: votes, power, status, money.
The cracks in the combine surfaced after the matchfixing scandal hit the fan. Dalm-iya and Co dismissed it. Bindra groupies like Sunil Dev stuck to the no-smoke-without-fire theory. The divide grew at a meeting in September before the team left for Toronto. Bindra aides say the former BCCI president was miffed because upstart Dalmiya had walked away with the ICC crown.
Worse, by agreeing to the rotation of the chairmanship, Dalmiya had committed an "act of grave betrayal". "Prior to the Kuala Lumpur meeting, we had an almost three-fourth majority in the general council," wrote Bindra in a missive to Raj Singh Dungarpur. "With the power transferred to the executive board, we can only get a one-third majority." Also, under the new formula, the ICC chair would next come India's way after 30 years. "We've paid too heavy a price for just getting first turn," said Bindra.
But top BCCI sources say the ICC crown is a red herring. The real reason Bindra fell out with Dalmiya was that the plum marketing committee—where the moolah is—which he wanted to head after his term ended as BCCI chief in September 1996 never took off. Insiders say Dalmiya dropped the plan to set up the panel after Bindra insisted on staffing it with his own men. But Lele offers an explanation that provides extraordinary insight into the way the Dalmiya set-up runs: "We felt there was no need for the panel since all the deals had been tied up for the next three years." To Bindra's ire, Dalmiya continued to dabble in the domestic scene. "He wanted to be prime minister, chief minister and district magistrate at the same time," said Sunil Dev. Dalmiya sought a place on the working committee for all past and present ICC presidents. "That's when the rift deepened," says D.C. Agashe, a sugar baron who lost 17-13 to Dungarpur. Agashe had contested 'against' Bindra in '93, but in cricket as in politics, there are no permanent foes.
As the woes—real and perceived—piled up, the paranoia grew. Dalmiya felt Bindra was using his bureaucrat connections to get income tax and police officers to pitch for votes, and that his aides were spreading rumours about Dalmiya's business friends.
Bindra in turn suspected Dalmiya of instigating the CBI probe into the acquisition of land for the Mohali stadium. "Joginder Singh apparently told Bindra that C.M. Ibrahim was insisting on a probe," says Kamal Morarka. "Bindra seems to have put one and one together. Joginder was of Karnataka cadre. Ibrahim and WorldTel's Mark Mascarenhas were from Bangalore. Dalmiya is Mark's pal. Ergo." Morarka, who handled the CBI as a minister in Chandrashekhar's PMO, says it isn't so easy to get an inquiry instituted.
AS the vibes grew worse, Lele says Bindra refused to attend a meeting with Ibrahim brokered by former BCCI chief N.K.P. Salve to thrash out the matter. But, as a serving public officer, Bindra couldn't put up the lost ICC crown or the CBI probe for public consumption. So while he spoke of Dalmiya mortgaging the interests of India and the ICC associate members who helped secure the 1996 World Cup, his pals went for the jugular.
For effect, Sunil Dev blamed Dalmiya for India's World Cup semifinals defeat: "He had asked all host associations not to use the grounds for non-cricketing purposes for a year and then went and dug up the Eden Gardens for the opening ceremony, which was a flop. Result: on an underprepared wicket, India crumbled," says Dev.
Karnataka's C. Nagaraj circulated a note pleading for "stability, transparency, equal opportunities in appointment of managers and observers, and a code of conduct", evidently as opposed to one-man's secret wheeling-dealing.
Then, Dev touched the raw nerve. How, asked he in March, was WorldTel—which didn't have its own production staff, which defaulted on payments and with which Dal-miya had said he had harrowing experiences during the World Cup—in the running for the Independence Cup? And after the WorldTel bribery scandal hit Sri Lanka, Dev stepped on the gas. He warned Dungarpur of the dangers of dealing with a man like Mark Mascarenhas. "There is an all-round impression that somebody in the BCCI was bent upon favouring WorldTel," he said.
Although engaged by DD at a cost of Rs 3 crore for the Independence Cup, Dev said Pepsi had told the BCCI working committee that WorldTel was demanding money to give suitable coverage for the tournament it was sponsoring. Dalmiya filed a Rs 15-crore suit; Dev responded with a Rs 24-crore one. The kites flew. One interpretation was that the Dalmiya-Bindra skirmish was a fight between WorldTel and Trans World International (TWI) for the India turf. TWI's five-year deal with BCCI ends in a couple of years, and for Mascarenhas, who already has Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in his pocket, getting hold of India on a contract instead of on a freelance basis will give him extraordinary reach.
Dalmiya's men responded by digging up the contract Bindra signed with Pepsi on the eve of leaving office as BCCI chief last September. The soft drink major signed a three-year contract to sponsor each Test for Rs 67 lakh and one-dayer for Rs 47 lakh but with a rider. If the match telecasts didn't reach seven million households wired by cable TV, it would meet only 50 per cent of the sponsorship terms. "How was this deal arrived at when BCCI had signed a five-year deal with ," asked a ESPN
Dalmiya aide. The implication: Bindra had smoothed the rough edges for Pepsi. And by agreeing to the seven million figure, he was trying to alter the telecast scenario. But Lokesh Sharma of 21st Century Media, who negotiated the deal for Pepsi, says there was no secrecy about the contract. "The seven-million figure was inserted because that was the figure the board had negotiated with ESPN while awarding telecast rights," he says. "The working committee was in the know." For his part, Bindra is said to have taken full responsibility for signing the deal at the AGM.
It's been a long, messy battle. But in spite of the bloodletting, Bindra says the BCCI is still "one big, happy family". Dalmiya quips that this will only help him run ICC better. And with touching naivete, both sides insist this won't affect the game. But following what in the end was a petty, personal, no-holds-barred fight for control of the country's richest, most influential, visible sports body by two highly ambitious persons, associations which voted against Dalmiya can brace for tough times ahead.
Karnataka's C. Nagaraj had hitched his wagon to the other side hoping to become vice-president and later president. With Bindra's defeat, Bangalore's growing prominence could suffer. And a genuine cricket strategist like Brijesh Patel, whom Nagaraj had hoped to carry along as the South Zone selector in place of Shivlal Yadav, will have to wait for his chance.
Sunil Dev's grand plan of shifting India's cricket capital from Calcutta to Chandigarh will deep freeze, as will his dreams of building a stadium in Delhi as beautiful as the one in Mohali. The Bindra group too will try to make things more difficult for Dalmiya-Mascarenhas. Agashe, who says he would have reviewed all TV deals if he had come to power and got rid of cigarette and liquor sponsorship, won't rest easy.
Tamil Nadu Cricket Association chief A.C. Muthaiah, who reportedly secured at least five votes for Dalmiya with his connections, can look for a spot under the sun. "Muthaiah has emerged as a key player. If Bindra wants to stay in the running after all this, he has to make up with him," says a longtime observer of cricket-politics.
As the backroom operators prepare for the next round, as the real issues lay buried, the mind boggles to see how a little tact by both satraps would have gone a long way in furthering the interests of Indian cricket.
And then, they accuse journalists of not covering the game.
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