Lodha panel reforms can save BCCI

The Justice Lodha panel’s recommendations are revolutionary. When implemented, they will help establish once again the primacy of Indian cricket after the game had been hijacked and nurtured by top administrators to be their personal fiefdoms. Since the panel was empowered by the Supreme Court, there is no reason to believe a majority of the proposals will not be binding.

The BCCI may have more than a few objections and as the most litigious body in India it is likely to contest some of the rights being taken away. But it lost its moral voice long ago in its pathetic inability to tackle any of the problems that cropped up most recently under the stewardship of Mr N. Srinivasan, whose own son-in-law was found betting while abusing his position in his IPL team players’ dugout. The panel has done a signal service in clearly delineating those who are eligible and the lengths of the their terms as honorary office-bearers to help administer and promote cricket as part of the BCCI. The board had been reduced to a cosy club with a few administrators doling out favours and freely corrupting the system to further their own agenda. In keeping out government ministers and bureaucrats, the panel of three retired top court judges is also showing how to restore values to a game that is a metaphor for fair play. Many such personalities have rendered some service to the game in the past, but as a class of people they were always likely to compromise its pristine principles to “get things done”.

The proposal to let professionals run the game with a CEO and six aides while administrators lay down the broad principles and objectives is, perhaps, the most valuable, which BCCI must implement quickly. The system has for too long been beholden to businessmen or politicians dictating terms and making every move sound like a favour. The suggestion that BCCI should come under the RTI Act is not an impossible objective. It would best serve the purpose if selection matters, which are willy-nilly matters of judgment rather than rendering justice, are excluded and only financial and administrative matters are placed in the ambit of the RTI Act. Almost everything else is detail which can be worked upon. The suggestion to make sports betting legal is not outlandish. Given the state of national legislation currently, it is extremely unlikely such a proposal would become law. But, if it does, it would help take away the stigma of a very large illegal cricket betting market, reduce hawala transactions and stop profits from falling into the wrong hands as it tends to with Dawood Ibrahim believed to control a business of billions of rupees.