Turning point

Sixty years after Independence, the Board of Control for Cricket in India continues to function in its own inimitable style -- zero tolerance towards players and scant respect for even an icon like Kapil Dev. Happenings in the last two days clearly suggest that the BCCI, arguably the richest sports body in the country, has taken the formation of the Indian Cricket League as a threat to its supremacy.

And hours after India’s embarrassing loss in the first one-day international to England at the Rose Bowl on Tuesday, questions will again emerge whether the BCCI runs the sport in the best possible way. It is a well-known fact that the BCCI officials – past and present – never bothered about how the sport was doing at the grass-root level. Their sole concern was, and still is, that the balance sheet looked impressive, figures of which we never got to know until of course yesterday.

The world over, sporting bodies are known to fund development programmes at the basic level. Just that in India, for every champion who is born or produced in any sporting arena, it is always despite the system and not because of it.

But the BCCI takes the cake simply because unlike other sports federations viz. the Indian Hockey Federation or the National Rifle Association of India, funds are never a problem. Hockey players are known to last it out a full 70-minute stretch on the turf despite being fed poor diets sanctioned by the Sports Ministry. If hockey players crib about bad diet being the reason for a loss, we will have to stomach it.

So doesn’t cricket, which is not a sport but actually a religion in India, need to be doing better in terms of a structure where players get what they want to excel at the nets? Ask the BCCI, and you will never get a positive answer. And this is exactly why Kapil Dev has come up with the idea of an ICL, where it is not just spent forces like Brian Lara and Inzamam-ul Haq who will rake in the moolah but also players we have hardly heard of. Die-hard cricket fans may recall one Ambati Rayudu of Andhra Pradesh being a bundle of talent, but does anyone care to find out what he has earned from the sport? It is almost a pittance, which is why he has decided to join the ICL.

And what of a thousand other teenagers who sacrifice academics and play cricket in gullies, then parks and make-shift grounds. Does the BCCI even have a list of how many clubs there are in India? No, they don’t unless it is a state association or an institution affiliated with them which will be part of their voting process.

Modern day sport is about professionalism in all forms. Just that in India, our cricket is hardly professional anywhere – on or off the field. We flop at the World Cup in West Indies five months back and put Kapil Dev on a committee to look into what went wrong. And just because Kapil has today dreamt of a good future for talent – around 50 signed till now with the ICL – he gets the boot from the same committee and is also thrown out of the National Cricket Academy of which he was chairman.

Was Kapil going to ruin the technique of players who go to the NCA in Bangalore just because he will now run the ICL? Was Kapil going to poach on NCA trainees which is why he gets thrown out by the BCCI. There will be more questions than answers, but at the end of it we all know Kapil has never been liked or respected by the BCCI despite all the laurels he has won.

There are true stories of how Kapil, who wanted to be part of the Haryana Cricket Association administration over 15 years back, losing the elections simply because he had no clue of the politics being played. Nothing has changed even today and the sport is still run in India not by players who know the sport, but politicians and businessmen. And if you happen to ask any one of them how to hold a bat or show how to grip the ball, they will never last one day at the nets!

Today, it is easy to accuse Kapil of making money from the ICL. Even if he is, what’s wrong, at least he is guaranteeing a player like Rayudu or former international like Deep Dasgupta and Dinesh Mongia a future where they will have decent bank balances and not worry of what will happen in years to come when they cannot play cricket anymore.

Barring a few hundred cricketers who get jobs in public sector undertakings or banks, domestic cricketers have no future. Yes, if you play Ranji Trophy cricket from the 2008 season, you can earn Rs 36,000 per match day. So whether it is a Himachal Pradesh vs Jammu and Kashmir match or Delhi vs Mumbai, players will get decent money.

There are so many success stories of cricketers like Rajinder Goel and Padmakar Shivalkar having been excellent spinners in domestic cricket but never got to do the same for the country just because they were in the sport at the wrong time. But in modern day cricket, players like these can never exist simply because of the rigours of the sport. So, money does become very important.

Take the case of a speedster like Ashish Nehra from Delhi. Having done well in the 2003 World Cup in South Africa, where India made the final, he is almost forgotten now and struggled to pay the bills for his ankle surgery and rehab in Australia last year. Was it not the BCCI’s responsibility to handle all this? If this is the plight of someone who has played at the highest level, imagine what happens to the lower rung cricketers if they get injured. They never get treated properly or simply fade away into oblivion.

So, why could the BCCI not have upped match fees for domestic cricket before? Is it because they know the Indians first class cricketers are like Oliver Twist and wouldn’t dare to ask for more. The BCCI’s change of heart will always be looked at as a knee-jerk reaction. Or is it an attempt to stop movement of players to the ICL.




Kapil, you need to be saluted for instilling fear in the BCCI. A body which flexed its muscles and thought they were answerable to none has been woken up from slumber. Looking at the money which can now be earned, youngsters who dream of representing India on the big stage can at least think of a livelihood from cricket if their dreams are shattered.

This is a big turning point in cricket and whether the ICL clicks or fails, fringe players will always thank Kapil for what he has already done. Twenty20 or the longer version, Kapil and his sponsors have started the churning process. And how the International Cricket Council (ICC), which has maintained silence till now reacts will be interesting to see.

The best, of course, is to hope the ICC does not see Kapil and the ICL as villains. It’s cricket after all.