BCCI at it again

Rather than accepting the Lodha findings per se and suspending the two teams, the IPL governing body is merely buying time

Trust the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for undoing anything that is conceived for the betterment of the game. Sunday’s much-hyped meeting of the Indian Premier League (IPL) Governing Council (GC) to take stock of the damning condemnation by Justice Rajendra Mal Lodha apparently has had no effect on the gentlemen running the show.

By deciding to constitute a working group that will prepare a roadmap for IPL, the honourable men have taken one step forward and two backward. To make further mockery, the Group has sought six weeks for coming out with their findings. The million dollar question that is haunting the bemused fans is in the subtle approach.

Indeed, what is there left for discussing any further when the Mudgal Committee and Lodha panel have castigated the very functioning of the League and the Board. It is only the BCCI administrators who can come up with ridiculous contentions like having ‘respect’ for the verdict and ‘accepting’ it. Come to think of it, the working group will be headed by politician-administrator Rajeev Shukla, during whose earlier tenure the IPL scam blew into a multi-crore fraud.

Given the dubious distinction (bless him for his magnanimous gesture to quit the IPL Commissioner post only to return with a larger-than-life bearing) of the man who will now form the think-tank of the group, one can assume which direction the roadmap could possibly take. Shukla has only recently made a strong pitch for “protecting the interests of players and the Board”.

That is precisely where the trouble lies. Rather than accepting the Lodha findings per se and suspending the two teams, the IPL governing body is merely buying time. The body is playing truant by remaining oblivious of the Lodha bombshell that is aimed at restoring the image and credibility of Indian cricket.

If ignorance of law is no exception so also will be in not honouring the sanctity of law, which is what Sunday’s meeting eventually transpired into. One wonders which stake-holders’ interests the wise men are talking about when the fact of the matter is that the black-sheep is operating from within the system, a point that was made abundantly clear by both the committees that went into the IPL fraud.

The BCCI members are yet to understand the impact of the Lodha decision and the wider ramifications it has. Seeking six weeks to evolve a fool-proof structure so as to uphold the integrity of the game, the BCCI has added another shameful chapter to its name.

If one goes by the deliberations of the meeting, only one man dared to call for termination of the two teams. Alas, in a world which swears by majority, the man was vetoed by other gentlemen, who all owe their loyalties and position to the incumbent Chairman of the International Cricket Council, whose team is in the thick of the sordid IPL drama that has brought disrepute to the country’s image.