Sports

Running Cricket Into The Ground

Rolling in crores, the BCCI is a money-minting behemoth. A PIL seeks to get them to play cricket.

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Running Cricket Into The Ground
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Dear cricket lover,

You were right. When 295 of you responded to an Outlook-MDRA opinion poll last month, 69 per cent of you agreed that it was the greed of the Indian cricket board that was responsible for the sad state of Indian cricket. Maybe it was just gut feel that made you say that. Now, an Outlook investigation proves just how. Over a month-and-a-half ago-as India took one its worst ever beatings in Australia-Outlook began investigating the affairs of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

In this time, Outlook contacted sources in the BCCI and former cricket administrators and players, and acquired confidential annual reports and minutes of meetings of the BCCI. The reports date all the way back to 1983-84. The BCCI papers tell the damning story of how incompetent this clique of "professional cricket administrators" is and how it has worked at systematically destroying the game we love with an unbridled passion. For starters, over the last 11 years it’s spent under Rs 14 lakh a year on coaching.

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Let the numbers tell their own story. Over the last 11 years, beginning 1987-88-a year deliberately selected, because of the profitable Reliance Cup, which ensures that we begin calculating from a high base, making the numbers more conservative-BCCI’s income has shown a compounded annual growth rate of 28.4 per cent. It is the richest cricket board in the world with revenues of Rs 16.63 crore and reserves of Rs 44 crore. And with a Rs 235-crore, five-year television rights contract signed with Doordarshan, which is worth Rs 42 crore annually, BCCI’s already overflowing coffers are going to be groaning further under the weight. The BCCI-a registered non-profit society, which is supposed to work towards promoting cricket in India-would in fact be the envy of many a blue-chip company. For, during the same tenure, its profits have jumped annually by 59.1 per cent. That’s better than what the darling of the bourses, Infosys, could manage. Theoretically, four years ago, if Infosys made a profit of Rs 100, it would be making a profit of Rs 506 today. Under the same scenario, the BCCI would outshine Infosys by far and would have a profit of Rs 639 today.

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And the BCCI’s project management skills are just phenomenal. It manages an astounding return on investment on each tour the Indian team embarks on, or whenever a team tours India. While the exact figures will only be known at the end of this fiscal, according to budget, last year, when the Indian team went to Sharjah, the board earned Rs 92.62 lakh, a return on investment of 52 per cent. For that matter, take the World Cup in England. While we, the Indian cricket fans, hung our heads in shame over the team’s performance, the real winner was the BCCI. It managed a profit of over Rs 1 crore, which is a return of 42 per cent on investment. And while new West Indian find Ricardo Powell blasted our bowlers to all parts of Singapore, the board raked in Rs 65.81 lakh as profit, a 54 per cent return. What about India’s recent disaster in Australia? The only Indians who came out trumps were the BCCI, which totted up a Rs 38.76 lakh profit, a 14 per cent return. With such brilliant numbers, were BCCI a publicly listed company, fund managers would just love to have it in their portfolio.

But these numbers look great, so what’s the problem? Well, it is that we have one of the saddest teams in world cricket. Since 1987, we have won only an approximate 48 per cent of our matches. If anything, the last few years have seen our performance slide. Between 1997-99, we lost nine and won only four of the 27 Tests we played. In contrast, South Africa has won 62 per cent of its Tests and 64 per cent of its one-dayers. It’s roughly the same with Australia, which has won 63 per cent of all matches it has played since 1987. And during this period, Australia has won the World Cup twice, while South Africa has reached the semi-finals twice.

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To know why, look at the other half of the BCCI’s annual reports and you’ll see what’s wrong. While turnover and profits have been shooting through the roof, coaching expenses-something our Dravids and Laxmans could do with, to learn how to cope with the bouncy pitches down under-if adjusted for inflation over the last 11 years have actually declined in real terms by 40 per cent. Today, the Indian cricket board spends just over Rs 17 lakh on coaching. That’s 1.1 per cent of the Rs 16 crore revenue and 2.2 per cent of the Rs 8.26 crore expenditure. And till last year, when they ran up a bill of Rs 3.5 lakh to pay Andrew Kokinos, it never had any expenses on a physical trainer. It’s not that administrators aren’t aware of the problem. They just don’t know how to solve it. "The BCCI should invest more money in cricket. Not just our national side but also in school- and college-level cricket. College cricket is almost non-existent and that’s not a good sign," says former India captain and manager, Ajit Wadekar. Incidentally, he’s also the vice-president of the Maharashtra Cricket Association which, despite earning almost Rs 3 crore in revenue, is Rs 92 lakh in the red. Adds C. Nagaraj, former BCCI secretary: "There’s plenty of money with the BCCI but just a fraction is spent on tournaments for youngsters and on camps to groom them. They’ve been talking about academies for the last three to four years but nothing’s happened." In fact, the BCCI’s 1998-99 annual report commits itself to starting a cricket academy by December 1999, of which there is still no sign. Contrast that with Australia’s 11-year-old Commonwealth Bank Cricket Academy (CBCA). In 1998, 55 cricketers spent time at the CBCA, including the national under-17 development squad, a number of Test players and 14 players from the Queensland Academy of Sport. Also, there are 11 full-time residential and 20 part-time cricketers at the CBCA.

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This year, even the relatively poorer United Cricket Board of South Africa is spending 25 times the amount-Rand 6 million (Rs 4.2 crore)-on cricket development. And last year, it spent the equivalent of Rs 6.93 crore on cricket development. Little wonder that South Africa can literally play two international teams while we struggle to string 11 decent cricketers together. In fact, over 11 years, the BCCI has spent just Rs 1.5 crore on coaching. Instead, the Indian cricket board prefers to spend money on administrative expenses, i.e. on themselves. Last year, it spent Rs 64.24 lakh on "committee meeting expenses" and Rs 40 lakh on travel. Even if the BCCI holds one meeting a month, that’s Rs 5.35 lakh per meeting, without counting the travelling expenses. This total of Rs 1.5 crore is nearly nine times the amount spent on coaching our cricketers.

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The BCCI clearly thinks Indian cricket pitches are perfect. In 1998, it transferred Rs 2 crore to the curators’ training fund. But spent zilch. Instead, the money is earning 9 per cent interest and the fund’s corpus has grown to Rs 2.25 crore. Indian coach Kapil Dev, the lone hunter who slogged for over a decade on dead tracks here, obviously has a somewhat different view on Indian pitches. After the recent Challenger series in Ahmedabad, he said, "It was the same old story of flat wickets, giving the batsmen an exaggerated opinion of themselves and the bowlers being made to look mediocre. All the batsmen needed to do was to go on the front foot and whack the ball to any part of the ground. " Don’t blame the Dravids and Rameshes when they don’t perform on bouncy Aussie tracks. Blame the board.

Then, an expenditure of only Rs 8.26 crore-of which Rs 3 crore is spent on domestic tournaments-leaves a profit of Rs 8 crore, because the BCCI doesn’t pay any taxes (but that’s another story and we’ll come to that later). So, what does the BCCI do with the money? Well, like the Indian middle classes, who save for their retirement, the BCCI puts it in bank fixed deposits that give it a return of 9 per cent a year. And the BCCI is a compulsive saver. Today, it has Rs 44 crore in bank fixed deposits, earning it Rs 4 crore a year.

Well, if it has so much money and doesn’t know what to do with it, why don’t they pay any taxes? For, if the BCCI doesn’t know what to do with the money, perhaps the state could utilise it for its citizens. In fact, the board was granted tax exemption as a sports organisation under Section 10(23) of the Income-Tax Act, a facility which expired on March 31, 1998. The board applied for exemption again, which hasn’t been granted as yet. Yet, no provision for income tax was made last year. If that wasn’t enough, the board actually said the Rs 50 lakh donation-less than 1 per cent of its reserves-it intended to make to the Kargil Relief Fund would be subject to it being granted tax exemption. That isn’t the only way taxpayers subsidise the BCCI. The Karnataka State Cricket Association pays just Rs 1,000 as yearly rent to the state for its facilities, while the Delhi and District Cricket Association pays under Rs 28,000.

And while the BCCI gets rich, it doesn’t bother to pay players their due. For instance, for five years, former all-rounder Manoj Prabhakar’s been fighting to get his Rs 8 lakh benevolent fund money released. Says Prabhakar: "This sum is being held back because of personal vendetta." Having played 39 Test matches and 140 one-dayers in a 12-year career, Prabhakar was looking forward to this amount to start a business after calling it quits in 1996. "But because of my comments on match-fixing, the BCCI says the matter is in court and is using this ploy to block the money," he says. In his cricket-playing years, Rs 4,000 was deducted for every Test and Rs 2,000 per one-dayer played which went into the player’s benevolent fund. Imagine not being paid your provident fund on retirement! His lawyer, Nidhesh Gupta, says he’s waiting for the green signal from Prabhakar to move the courts. "The BCCI has violated a contract having agreed to pay a certain sum in cash and a certain sum through the benevolent fund," he says.

But who’re we to question the BCCI? After all, it is a registered non-profit society, answerable only to the state cricket associations. First, we’re precisely why the BCCI is so rich. If we, the cricket lovers, didn’t bunk office or school and brave lathicharges at badly-maintained stadia or stay glued to the TV set to watch Srinath steam in to bowl or Sachin give us the perfect exhibition of the straight drive, the BCCI would be just another sports association scrounging for government grants to stay afloat. It’s thanks to us that TV rights are worth what they are-sponsors pay up to Rs 67.5 lakh a Test match to the BCCI-and we buy the tickets. It’s because of us, the cricket lovers, that BCCI "honorary" executive committee members stay in five-star hotels, get Rs 3,000 a day as TA/DA for each meeting attended (and they get it for a day prior to and for the day after the meeting too). It’s because of us that every cricket administrator worth his salt struts around for days before and after a cricket match as he is begged for passes. Plus, it is because of us that they manage the huge amounts of money that would make a fund manager blush.

And if they are a registered society answerable only to its members, who gives them the authority to send 11 players on to the field, with the India logo on their backs? If they’re responsible only to themselves, then the 11 players should represent BCCI, and not India. If we are the ones who give them the authority, then we demand transparency and accountability for India’s wins and losses. There is no reason for every BCCI annual report to explicitly state in bold capital letters: "strictly confidential and not for publicity". Why are cricketers selected or dropped on performance, while there is no yardstick to measure the game’s managers?

Says arguably India’s best gloveman ever, Syed Kirmani: "How can you fix accountability, as everyone is an honorary member and not a person who’s appointed and draws a salary for the job done? The board must identify the right people for the right task and pay them substantially so they do a professional job." But how can a board staffed by everyone but cricketers select the right people? The problem is that the members of virtually all state cricket associations are everything else-ranging from businessmen to lawyers to housewives-but cricketers. All state association executive committees consist of non-cricketers, who are eventually elected to the BCCI. With the result that Indian cricket is run by people who’ve never played the game. "The elected office-bearers cannot be made accountable. So they should appoint professionals to achieve the results," says former Indian cricket eves captain, Shanta Rangaswamy.

If anything, the board seems to award mediocrity. Here is an excerpt from its 1983-84 annual report, signed by the then honorary treasurer Jagmohan Dalmiya: "The Board organised a charity day-night match in aid of PM’s Relief Fund at New Delhi. An organising committee was formed for the purpose though it is not clear to whom the said organising committee is responsible or answerable to; to the Board or DDCA. The proceeds of the match along with the statement of accounts have not been received, as a result of which neither the proceeds have been handed over to the Relief Fund, nor are the accounts of the match included in the statement of account of the Board." It gets even better. "The Board organised a cultural function as part of World Cup victory celebrations under the title ÔLata Mangeshkar Nite’. A committee was formed... I regret to report that the said committee has not rendered any accounts and hence accounts of the cultural function could not be included in the statement of accounts of the Board. It is reported that net profit is above Rs 50 lakh... It is not known under what authority the organising committee is holding the surplus fund and the statement of accounts even one year of the function." There are a few other such cases. How would shareholders have reacted if their company had given them such an annual report? The state associations obviously have no problem. Today, Dalmiya is president of the International Cricket Council. Says cricket commentator and columnist Charu Sharma: "The board is like the government, it can blunder and get away. The officials feel they are secure and not accountable."

But if the state associations don’t seem to have a problem, is there a way out? Says Nagaraj: "My suggestion is that professionalism must be introduced at the state and national level and people must be appointed as chief executive officers, as is the case with the TCCB in England and ACB in Australia. If they are paid salaries, they will be accountable. Otherwise, they will get away because most of them are honorary members." One way out is to get former cricketers involved. This must begin at the level of the state associations, which could ensure that only former first class cricketers get elected to the executive committees. Only those cricketers who have proved themselves as administrators at the state level can then apply for BCCI posts. That is where they will have professional salaried managers to help them run the BCCI. Today, that looks like a far cry.

On Friday, February 18, the first attempts at shaking up the Indian cricket bureaucracy were made, when Outlook learnt that a public interest litigation (see box) was filed in the Delhi High Court. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a movement to save Indian cricket.

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