Lords Over Gentlemen

When the Hansie Cronje match-fixing case broke in 2000 and the Board of Control for Cricket in India was slammed for the alleged involvement of some of its players and its own inability to spot the malaise, BCCI mulled signing Amitabh Bachchan—then a neutral, lovable icon—as its brand ambassador to mend its battered image. Among other things, it planned TV spots, with Big B highlighting the good deeds of the sole custodian of Indian cricket. But, like so many inexplicable things in the BCCI, the move was shelved.

Since then, BCCI has accumulated a multitude of sins, with the 2013 IPL betting and fixing scandal being the acme. In July or later, when the Supreme Court finally rules on how exactly it wants the board to implement the recommendations of the three-member Lodha committee appointed by it to reform the game’s 87-year-old administrative body, it will require a star bigger than Bachchan to give BCCI’s image some spit and polish—despite all the legal advice the Rs 5,436.89 crore in its coffers can buy.

So far, the signs look ominous, judging from the mood of their lordships in court:

• “Who gave you the authority to demarcate territories? How can someone start a cricket association and demarcate the entire country for themselves?”

• “BCCI must have distributive justice. Why are 11 states penniless? Why should these states go begging? If Gujarat gets Rs 66 crore, then why should the northeastern states get only Rs 50 lakh?”

• “You are finding fault with having a nominee of the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India on your governing council, but you don’t mind a minister?”

• “You can’t jump the gun. These recommendations deserve respect.... The best thing is to fall in line and follow the suggestions to save the trouble.”

Finally, it seems, the vuvuzela is begin­ning to screech in the ears of a power-­drunk, cash-flushed organisation that doled out patronage like the maharajas of yore, with scant accountability and transparency, and worked its way around every conflict by making the right phone calls. Last week, when the incumbent BCCI president Shashank Manohar—the ‘Mr Clean’ in an organisation that rarely has use for such stain-free values—quit his post, it seemed the wind had gotten out of the BCCI’s blimp.

As the SC hauls the BCCI over the coals, there are two ways of seeing the ongoing courtroom drama. Firstly, that a large, rich, unaccountable and opaque body is being brought to book. After all, who knows how the BCCI is run, how much it pays its ‘honorary’ office-bearers? The other way is to see the SC’s exertions as necessary but slightly over the top, going against the very basis of free enterprise, notwithstanding the fact that the BCCI deals with a sport that is religion for millions.

When the Jagmohan Dalmiya-Anurag Thakur combine took over after an acrimonious election in March last year, the board was mired in 57 court cases across the country. Now, as the most damning of them all—an appeal filed under N. Srinivasan’s watch in the apex court against a Bombay HC order scrapping a BCCI-appointed panel in the 2013 IPL betting-fixing scandal—brings matters to a head (see timeline), tired BCCI mandarins say they have had enough of lawyers, court battles, and the non-stop negative publicity.

The Bombay HC was responding to a PIL filed by the unrecognised Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB), allegedly funded by Srinivasan’s foes. Notwithstanding that, the BCCI earmarked an astronomical Rs 330.32 crore for the express purpose of fighting the case—some officials say on instructions from Srinivasan, since he and his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan had been implicated in the case. The former for conflict of interest (he owned an IPL team as BCCI chief); the latter for his phone calls ahead of CSK matches.

The SC appointed two inquiries, both under former Punjab and Haryana High Court chief justice Mukul Mudgal, and then proceeded to constitute the R.M. Lodha committee to decide the quantum of punishment for those identified by the Mudgal panel. While the court upheld the Lodha committee-suggested punishment for Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, as well as Meiyappan and the Royals’ co-owner Raj Kundra, action on its second report, suggesting wide-ranging reforms for the BCCI, is still awaited.

The delay is due to BCCI’s objections to the reforms, which can change the very face of the organisation that the public refers to variously as ‘arrogant’, ‘money-minded’, ‘self-aggrandising’. Several of the board’s affiliates joined the parent body in opposing many recommendations.

Perhaps to take an all-round view, the court also appointed senior lawyer Gopal Subramanium as amicus curiae, who ‘salu­ted’ all the recommendations, barring the proposal to make betting legal and putting nominees of IPL franchises on the IPL governing council.

In its last hearing on May 10, the SC said it would give a final opportunity to the BCCI to come up with reasons for opposing certain Lodha panel recommendations, and earmarked June 30 for that. It is expected that the BCCI would complete its arguments that day, and then wait for the final outcome. The general feeling within the BCCI is of despondency. Many officials are ready to face the worst. They also say the board would not appeal to a larger Supreme Court bench.

“We’ve reached this stage only because of one person’s adamant stand. If he had not been so adamant and resigned at that stage (after the IPL scandal broke out) when people started pointing to his near relation, we wouldn’t have reached this stage and Manohar would not have resigned,” says Vidarbha Cricket Association president Prakash Dixit, a close confidant of Shashank Manohar. “In fact, his (Srinivasan) image, and that of the BCCI, would have gone up had he resigned then. But he went on filing case after case and as a result people started believing that something was wrong. The BCCI’s image went from bad to worse.”

Ajay Shirke, president of the Maha­rashtra Cricket Association and a close friend of Manohar, says during the peak of the IPL betting scandal the BCCI made no effort to tackle negative publicity. “It went over 18 months and, during the entire period, the media was not friendly. Managing the media with our side of the story was not there, it had become a highly polarised situation, and a certain approach was pursued—the perceived reputation of the board. No doubt, the courts were not influenced by the media, but a general perception was created,” Shirke, a businessman based out of Pune and London, told Outlook.

Why has the BCCI come to this stage when it is being ridiculed by all? Many people, including former BCCI president A.C. Muthiah and Dixit, believe the availability of excess money besmirched the Board. “So much of money has come in, and because of that they want to be in the seat of power. They want to control it and dominate it. So, if you have to be in the seat of power, then you also have to extend freebies to these cricket associations, just to get their votes,” Muthiah told Outlook. “And those who don’t vote they cut off their supply; it is all because of money and power. They want to dominate and nobody ever looked at it from the (long-term) interest of the BCCI and the future of the BCCI. I am sorry to say that,” says the Chennai-based business tycoon. Dixit chips in, saying: “I agree that there has been excess money, especially after the advent of the IPL.” But shouldn’t there have been some in-built checks and balances? “One always learns from experience. Nobody had thought that it will all come to this stage because of the IPL,” says Dixit.

Money flowed into the BCCI’s coffers in a torrent after the IPL’s launch in 2008. The numbers are self-evident: In 2007-08, a year before the IPL started, the BCCI’s net worth was Rs 961.75 crore; seven years later, in 2014-15, the figure had zoomed to a whopping Rs 5,436.97 crore.

It was Lalit Modi who had successfully sold the IPL carrot to the then BCCI pre­­sident, Sharad Pawar, who gave him a $50 million cushion (Rs 200 crore @ Rs 40=$1 in 2007) to launch the tournament, which had many early doubters. Soon, the IPL caught the masses’ imagination, adv­ertisers and money started flowing in, and ‘LaMo’ was both Pied Pier and pundit of cricket administrators. What’s more, he soon became arrogant and powerful, and some top guns of the board started feeling jealous. That could be a small reason for Lalit Modi’s expulsion from the BCCI in April 2010, after three editions of the IPL.

After suspending him, then board president Manohar slapped Lalit Modi with several notices and expelled him. Lalit Modi, however, managed to become president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association, which itself stands suspended for electing him as its boss.

Bungled governance has been the BCCI’s Achilles’ heel. That is why Muthiah says Manohar should not have quit the board. “I wish Shashank had continued to steer the BCCI, because it’s a very crucial time. And he was steering it well,” he says. “He knew what the circumstances were. He didn’t come to a bed of roses; he knew the difficulties the board is facing. He took it as a challenge.... He was one person who was straight and good for the board. He should not have shirked the responsibility.”

Poor governance is possibly a reason for uneven distribution of funds amongst the board’s affiliated associations, with the Northeastern associations being completely neglected—something the SC bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and F.M.I. Kalifulla has been repeatedly pointing out in the hearings.

“I’ve only seen press coverage of the Lodha committee’s recommendations but welcome whatever I’ve read so far. I had appeared before the committee. Since then, we’ve formed a North East Cricket Development Committee, comprising Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Arunchal Pradesh, through which we’ve presented a memorandum to the BCCI to fully implement all the panel recommendations, carry out cricket dev­e­lopment in our region, and allocate us funds, which we haven’t received in the last several years,” says Abu Metha, secretary, Nagaland Cricket Association. “We also support the committee’s one state-one vote recommendation.”

Bihar is a test case of poor governance. Affiliated in 1935, Bihar’s full membership was snatched away by the then Dalmiya-headed BCCI in 2000. Strangely, the status was transferred to the newly formed Jharkhand, carved out of Bihar. Amid all the chaos, Aditya Verma, secretary of the unrecognised CAB who filed the initial PIL in the Bombay HC that led to formation of the Lodha panel, now knows the real reasons why certain people backed him.

“When I took on Srinivasan, everyone supported me, including Manohar and Thakur. It turns out that they had only one agenda and now I no longer have faith in anyone other than the courts,” he says disapprovingly.

Dixit admits that BCCI officials are now realising they should have been more careful. “Within the BCCI, a lot of people have now understood that ‘we have made certain mistakes’. And everyone has und­erstood that changes were required and we even made some changes. Actually, changes were going on and one should get some more time for that to happen,” he admits. “There could be a completely new-look BCCI in a few months because the court is keen to implement the Lodha Committee recommendations.”

While the writing on the wall seems clear to Dixit, others might just be behaving like an ostrich, and thus pretending that they won’t be affected by the outcome of the Supreme Court, now or later.

***

What BCCI Has Done

• Appointing a CEO (ex-TV honcho Rahul Johri)

• Appointing an ombudsman (Justice A.P. Shah)

• Appointing auditors to audit accounts of BCCI’s member associations (Deloitte, PriceWaterHouse Coopers, Grant Thornton)

• Uploading the BCCI constitution on its website (October 7, 2015)

• Establishing an Anti-Corruption Code

• Setting up a sports integrity intelligence gathering unit with policing powers for unearthing wrongdoings, and funding it

• Removing BCCI president’s much-criticised casting vote and decentralising his powers

• Initiating move to register players’ managers/agents

And What It Won’t

• Awarding voting rights to only one full member-association in every state

• Setting an upper age limit of 70 years for office-bearers of BCCI, its affiliates

• Limiting BCCI office-bearers to a maximum, cumulative period of nine years, interspersed by a cooling-off period

• Barring ministers and government servants in BCCI from holding posts in other sports bodies

• Disallowing adverts between overs on TV, saying that would cripple its main source of revenue

• Being included—and therefore answerable to the public—under the RTI Act

• Allowing a nominee of the Comptroller & Auditor-General or Accountant-General to sit on BCCI

• Allowing players to form an association and nominees of franchisees on IPL Governing Council

***

How The BCCI Cookie Crumbled Before The Might Of The Court

An arrogant response to the Bombay HC ruling brought the matter to the attention of the SC2005

• 2005 Lalit Modi joins BCCI as vice-president, by virtue of being Rajasthan Cricket Association president; disrupts the way it works with his out-of-the-box thinking

• 2007 September: IPL is launched, all are overjoyed at the golden goose. BCCI chief Sharad Pawar gives Lalit Modi a free hand to run the show

• 2009 BCCI shifts IPL to South Africa as it clashes with general elections in India, antagonising the Congress-led UPA government

• 2010 April: Modi reveals Kochi’s share-holding pattern. Shashi Tharoor gets caught in the crossfire. Shashank Manohar sacks Lalit Modi, who flees to London.

• 2013 May: Big IPL spot-fixing scandal breaks out, pacer Sreesanth and two other cricketers arrested.
  IPL chairman Rajiv Shukla resigns BCCI president N. Srinivasan’s son-in-law arrested; BCCI appoints three-member panel to probe Gurunath Meiyappan’s role.
  Srinivasan steps aside, an ailing Jagmohan Dalmiya steps in as interim BCCI chief.

• June: Cricket Association of Bihar files PIL in Bombay High Court against BCCI probe panel, alleging it was an ‘exercise’ to ‘cover up’ the activities of Meiyappan; Bombay HC declares panel illegal and unconstitutional

• August: BCCI moves Supreme Court against Mumbai HC ruling on IPL probe panel, the apex court refuses to stay order

• October: SC appoints a committee headed by former judge Mukul Mudgal to probe the IPL betting scandal

• 2014 February: Mudgal committee finds wrongdoing in CSK, owned by BCCI president N. Srinivasan. He is asked step down, Sunil Gavaskar made interim chief.

• April 16: SC rejects Srinivasan’s request to return to BCCI fold; he is among the 13 named in the Mudgal report

• May 6: BCCI suspends Rajasthan Cricket Association, mom­­ents after ‘expelled’ IPL boss Lalit Modi is elected its president in his absence

• 2015 January: SC passes order over Mudgal committee probe report, appoints three-member Committee headed by former CJI, R.N. Lodha.

• July: Lodha panel throws out CSK and Rajasthan Royals from IPL; life ban for Gurunath Maiyappan and Shilpa Shetty’s hubby Raj Kundra.

• 2016 May: SC comes down heavily on BCCI in the Lodha committee hearings. Shashank Manohar quits as president.