It is a proud moment that my association is hosting a great match, I am here to help: Ajay Shirke

You were the one responsible for the Pune stadium coming up. Now there are allegations that you had thoughts of disrupting an international match on that very ground.

Nobody among the people who really know is alleging. The rest is the theatre of the absurd. For me, it is a proud moment that my association is hosting a great match. I am not built from that stock which would think that if I am not in that association I will obstruct the game. In fact, I’m here to help them make the match as successful as possible. The Pune Stadium is my baby. We have all worked really hard to build a stadium that the Australian recce team called the best stadium outside of Australia four days ago. Would I wish ill will on my baby? It’s foolish.

There had been rumours of the Tests being affected too, while you were the BCCI secretary.

The Supreme Court had passed some orders wherein we were stopped from making payments, stopped from entering fresh contracts. When the orders were made, the court may not even have realized that this might affect the Test series. If we wanted to obstruct, then why would I as secretary have moved on separate occasions to the Supreme Court that there is urgency, please permit us to make these payments or otherwise the Tests will be affected. It would have been very easy for me to be a spectator at that time. There was hardly any time when the order came. I made affidavits and flew my personal man from my office at 11.30 pm to Delhi to have the application moved the very next day. The court also sensed and appreciated the urgency, heard the matter and immediately gave the permission. If I wanted to disrupt, that was a golden opportunity. I would have just sat still. We have some intelligence to be aware that if we do that we are only making our case worse.

Then there was the whole issue regarding your phone-call to Giles Clarke about ‘difficulties’ regarding the ODI series.

It is absolute rubbish. Giles is my friend. I have known him for a long time. I live in his country. Whenever he is in London I meet him. I had called him up. There is talk about I’d sent him a mail and all. Today also I don’t have his email id. I only communicate on his mobile. Giles lives in the countryside. It’s very difficult to get in touch with him since he doesn’t get signal. So when I vacated my office, I called him and said, ‘Giles we had difficulties during the Test match. Please contact whoever is in-charge of BCCI now.’ Because on the morning of January 3, with the second order amended, BCCI became headless. There was no president, secretary, treasurer or joint secretary. Now tell me, if India was touring South Africa and five or seven days before the Indian team leaves, the entire South African board becomes headless, will people not ask what is the position now? Do we come? Do we not come? Will our lads face any issues? The position was such that even if there was an application to be moved by the court, there was no officer-in-charge. There’s not even a secretary in the board. The Supreme Court actually wanted that secretary. That’s why they had said that the joint secretary took over as secretary and senior vice president would take over as president. So the court understood the importance of not leaving such a big organisation without any office bearers. But the third order, made that order redundant.

Then you sent him the other message a day later?

When we saw that there were orders that the CEO, Rahul Johri, and everybody else who was authorized by the Lodha committee to go ahead and take all the responsibility, I immediately told Giles. I sent him a message assuring him that things were in order and that his lads won’t be facing any difficulties. In fact, that was more of an effort from me to make sure that the series goes ahead rather than it doesn’t go ahead.

There was a lot of speculation regarding the meeting of the ex-officials in Bangalore on January 5 that you attended as well.

We are sacked people. We are not BCCI anyway now. So if all of us decide to get together and have a party, is it so much of a concern? Why should there be such a scare about us? Nothing came out of that meeting. There were high expectations that this and that will be decided, rebel BCCI will be formed, matches will be disrupted. But nothing happened. A group of sacked employees met there for a cup of tea. If it doesn’t sound true, I can’t help it. After that meeting there’s been no announcement. You are aware that all information from BCCI leaks out. It was just the fact that some administrators were just singled out and put into the wilderness. And it’s natural we will get together and discuss this. After all, all of us have given something to the board.

About Mr Johri, it’s kind of a bizarre turn of events that a CEO who wasn’t even around a year ago is suddenly now running the show.

Contrary to popular belief, the BCCI has always been run by professionals. The first effort to professionalize BCCI was made in 2005 when Sharad Pawar became president. A report was obtained from Tata Management Consultants and all these people working in a honorary capacity like Prof Ratnakar Shetty and MV Sridhar were made professionals. When I was treasurer we made the entire finance thing professional. That is why it runs. Tomorrow it will run even if there is no Rahul Johri. The systems are there in place. Rahul is doing a good job in the current crisis. But the credit is to the whole setup.

That you guys put up?

It’s evolved. It’s not like I put it in place or somebody else did. It’s an 87-year old organisation that grew from a corpus of Rs 5 to Rs 3000 crore. It’s not an accident that it has reached here.

You’ve generally been perceived as the guy with no vested interests. Do you feel you’ve been singled out suddenly?

My position hasn’t changed. Some people suddenly grow wings very fast. I don’t want to name anyone. Time will tell you. People look at it as opportunities. A little bit of something comes their way, they think that they are larger than life.

But since July 18, since they started giving timelines, there was this whole perception of BCCI having become this arrogant body…

Ultimately what were we entrusted with? We were told by the Lodha committee to call all the member associations and ask them to accept the reforms. If they are not ready to sign what can I do? Lock them in a room. Sign on this or you can’t leave. Almost 9 or 10 of those members had to vote to kick themselves out of the board. Mumbai has to say why am I in BCCI? Kick me out. Same with Gujarat or Railways.

You said if they had listened to you in the first place it wouldn’t have come to this..

Where does all this emerge from? It emerges from certain incidents of match fixing. Match fixing did not indict any administrator. The two people talked about being involved from the administration, Mr Srinivasan and Mr Sundar Raman, both got clean chits. Now who indulged in match fixing? The players. Now ironically the collective thought process is that the very fact that the players don’t have a greater say in the management of the association is the reason for the ills in the game. Now the new era will see more of them (players). And time will be the judge. But history will record that this whole thing started from match-fixing and ended up in the dismantling of the BCCI. I have no issues with that. That is the way the process has evolved.

What were your suggestions that weren’t heeded?

My objection was into how the whole inquiry was held. It was not a fair inquiry. It was also necessary that Mr Srinivasan could have handled it in a different manner. I had a difference of opinion with him and I resigned. Instead of creating trouble in the board, I said if my thought process isn’t gaining the support of the majority, the honourable thing to do is move away. If only the inquiry had been conducted in a more open manner. We all know that Mr Srinivasan is a very clean man. Nobody can point a finger at him at corruption or vested interests. But those were difficult times for him. Something close to his family. Anybody can make an error of judgement.

When Shashank Manohar took over there was this feeling that these guys will make up for all the ills of the Srinivasan regime?

I have never understood what ills everyone talks about. There was no FIR filed, no complaint of misappropriation of funds, or something about someone doing anything illegal in the BCCI. Conflict of interest gets spoken of a lot. In other sports, horse-racing for example, if you want to be a member of the committee you must own a race horse. So where is the conflict of interest here? People just like to bash anything that’s popular. Let’s take the case of the IPL matches being shifted from Pune to Latur. Yes, Latur was suffering from water issues. And you can’t play sport at the cost of people losing lives. But if the applicant really wanted to make a difference, why did he disappear once he’d got his primetime. Did he even care whether the water not used for IPL went to Latur? This is gallery play by the applicant. Rising Pune Supergints were collecting Rs 4 crore from each match here. They collected Rs 25 lakh per match from their remaining three matches that weren’t played here. IPL. It’s a beautiful horse which everyone can sit on and everybody looks at you.

Where do you stand in this whole debate about players and administrators, who’s better at the helm of the board?

There can be no bar on who’s entering the board. But whoever they are should come in through the electoral process. But if you are going to create privileged classes, like these many seats for these cricketers. For me that’s unsound. Let cricketers stand for elections and win them. Every association in the country has fair and more than fair share of cricketers. Ganguly was voted in the pre-reform cricket body. Mr Sharad Pawar was a politician. The biggest beneficiaries of him having been president is every ex-cricketer in this country. He started so many benevolent schemes that no cricketer had ever proposed. Because it was a politician’s idea and he implemented it, it should be recalled now actually.

There is this thought that the Supreme Court has turned you guys into villains.

These are all matters of the court. It’s irrelevant whether they think we are villains or not. Because there are very nice villains in the history of cinema like in Bond movies, who are more popular than the heroes. Even in our movies right from KN Singh to the famous Ajit, they had a great fan following. What you appear to that person is his perception. What I am, only I know.

You are just ok with walking away?

The January 2nd one didn’t affect my position in Maharashtra. The one that came a day later did. So within 48 hours I accepted it and was the first state president to step down. So if it affected me I would have been doing many other Machiavellian activities which I am not. This is the second time I’m in this ex-administrator position. Everybody thinks that it’s some big thing. For me it’s nothing. For me, if I lost a dog from my collection, then it would mean a million things more than all this.

In SMS to Giles, Shirke said: I see no difficulties that the English lads may face for the tour… 

IT WAS a phone-call to ECB president Giles Clarke on January 2 that’s supposed to have started it all, where Ajay Shirke was alleged to have expressed the board’s ‘inability’ to host the ODI series against England. But on Saturday, the former BCCI secretary rubbished the reports, and insisted that he had only expressed genuine concern to his long-standing colleague. He also revealed to have sent Clarke an SMS, which has been accessed by The Indian Express, a few days earlier—before reports of his communication with the ECB boss surfaced—in which Shirke assured him that the English players will not face any difficulty and the series would be held successfully.
“Morning Giles, further to my call, bcci has got its act together and the interim arrangements seem to have settled down well. Thus with these arrangements I see no difficulties that the English lads may face for the tour to go ahead very successfully. As you may know the first odi is in Pune, which used to be my ‘county’ till I left office last week. All arrangements there are going to plan and we are looking forward to a great game. I will meet you when I am back in London which should be very soon. Kind regards, ajay shirke”, the SMS read.
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