Cricket in critical care

This past week’s Supreme Court judgment striking down clause 6.2.4 of the constitution of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), as well as emphasising the BCCI’s decisions were open to judicial review, is far-reaching. In terms of absolute principles, it does impinge upon the autonomy of a civil society institution that is and should be independent of the Indian government and state. Yet, there is zero sympathy for the BCCI. It has invited this upon itself, with its opacity and absence of corporate governance.

Clause 6.2.4 was a sample of the BCCI’s sense of invulnerability. It upturned a rule that said BCCI officials could not have commercial interests in cricket activities governed by the BCCI. This was fine till the Indian Premier League (IPL) came along in 2008 and N. Srinivasan, then the BCCI treasurer and strongman of Tamil Nadu cricket, wanted to bid for a franchise and run the IPL team in his home city of Chennai. The BCCI’s bevy of lawyers came up with a clever-clever formula that was immoral, shoddy and convinced nobody. It permitted India Cements, a company promoted by the Srinivasan family and in which the family has 30 per cent stake, to own Chennai Super Kings (CSK).

In the years that followed, Mr Srinivasan went from strength to strength. He became BCCI president and then International Cricket Council chief. He was a member of the IPL governing council. The IPL franchise in a city is supposed to work in close conjunction with the local cricket association. In the case of Chennai, this amounted to Mr Srinivasan talking to himself. He was head of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, the boss man of CSK, the president of the BCCI and then the ICC as well. It was a bit like H.D. Deve Gowda, described by a fellow politician in 1996 as the “PM (Prime Minister) of India, the CM (chief minister) of Karnataka and the DM (district magistrate) of Hassan”.

Mr Srinivasan’s conflict of interest became glaring. CSK cricketers were accused of getting an unfair share of central contracts offered to leading Indian players by the BCCI. CSK became Indian cricket’s “state within a state”. Senior BCCI officials openly grumbled that a struggling M.S. Dhoni could not be removed as captain “as long as Srinivasan was there”.

When the IPL betting and (suspected) rigging scandal appeared, CSK was right in the middle of it. Mr Srinivasan’s son-in-law, a CSK official, was accused of trading insider information. As IPL and BCCI supremo, Mr Srinivasan was obliged to investigate and decide the quantum of punishment for CSK. He responded by filibustering and finally setting up a panel of two friends of his, retired high court judges from Chennai.

Mr Srinivasan’s rivals — their legal costs covered, it appears, by his ally turned adversary Lalit Modi — hit back. True, they may not have been above board in their own right. Nevertheless, Mr Srinivasan was batting on quicksand. The best defence his friends could come up with — and this writer is paraphrasing what a board bigwig actually said in a private conversation — was he (Mr Srinivasan) was not financially corrupt or using the BCCI to make money for himself but was perhaps an innocent megalomaniac. As for public perception, it just didn’t matter.

What is the upshot of the decade-long BCCI feud — involving Jagmohan Dalmiya, Sharad Pawar, Mr Srinivasan, Mr Modi and a host of other characters? It has damaged cricket as an enterprise. Without quite killing it, the BCCI and Mr Srinivasan have put the golden goose in the ICU. The IPL, a first-rate product and among the most compelling start-ups in the history of sport, is viewed as a crony-run mess and has lost its sheen.

In the two years since the betting scandal of 2013, cricket as a commercial venture has suffered. It remains India’s most popular sport, but high-value stakeholders are now actively seeking options, in tennis and football and even kabbadi. The BCCI is headed for a challenge it has not experienced in the 25-year golden run between the 1983 Prudential Cup and the beginning of the IPL. In institutional rigour and individual rectitude, the BCCI is not ready to meet this challenge.

The end of the Srinivasan era offers a chance to chart a new course. Since the BCCI is so politicised, much will depend on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley, both of whom have played a role in cricket administration (in Gujarat and Delhi, respectively) but whose ability to influence and induce reform in the BCCI has hitherto been below expectation.

In the coming weeks, there will be the familiar smash-and-grab operation that precedes any BCCI election. Mr Srinivasan would want a president of his choice, and the name of Mr Dalmiya, against whose overlord-ship Mr Srinivasan had led a revolt in the first place, is being mentioned. Mr Pawar, having lost power in Delhi and Maharashtra, will eye a takeover of the BCCI. Even railway minister Suresh Prabhu, defence minister Manohar Parrikar and human resources development minister Smriti Irani will probably field phone calls from candidates and lobbyists. Railways, services and universities are among the 31 affiliates who elect the BCCI president.

In the end, a president will be found. What after that? Is it not time for a professional CEO at the BCCI or at least the IPL. The IPL needs to be spun off, with the BCCI as a sort of holding company. It needs a CEO who reports to BCCI officials but has autonomy of action, signs guarantees against conflict of interest and insider trading, is free to negotiate contracts with sponsors and vendors, must be accountable to pre-decided key performance indicators, and should have his or her annual bonuses determined by revenues and profits earned. In the future the IPL could even be listed on the stock market.

There are models to borrow from. The English Premier League (EPL) is a private company owned by 20 constituent clubs. The EPL submits to the rules of the Football Association (the governing body for soccer in England), but does not allow the FA a say in day-to-day running. Such sequestering may be impossible to achieve in India but an attempt should be made. The Modi-Jaitley duo will be failing Indian cricket, and failing themselves, if they don’t push for it.

The writer can be contacted at malikashok@gmail.com