BCCI in a muddle

In forming a working group and giving it six weeks to consider the verdict that the Justice Lodha committee has handed down with a degree of finality to two IPL teams mired in betting, fixing and corruption charges, the governing council of the cash-awash league is merely trying to buy time. The BCCI has openly admitted what is only an established fact: that the Lodha committee sentence is already in force. What a committee with divided loyalties in the wheels-within-wheels BCCI will do regarding finding a formula to run the next two IPL seasons is just another complex riddle.

Under pressure from Lodha’s opinion that it is up to the BCCI and IPL to consider terminating Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, the BCCI keeps arguing that it cannot punish the teams twice for the same offence, and that a two-year suspension is adequate. However, the league has a history of having acted vindictively against Kings XI, Punjab and Rajasthan Royals — both were thrown out and got back in only on the intervention of courts — and Kochi Tuskers, Deccan Chargers and Pune Warriors that it would find it hard to justify not taking the same step against two teams who brought the league into disrepute.

There is only one philosophy that guides the BCCI’s decisions: Regardless of what happens, don’t kill the IPL goose that lays the golden eggs. There is only one currency that serves the BCCI, money. Such a body cannot be expected to apply the principles of justice to any issue.