Colonel held a mirror to the Board

Asking Vengsarkar to stop writing wasn’t such a bad idea. After all, he should not be seen commenting on the very people whose future he will soon be determining. It’s like the EC frowning on practices that could influence voters’ minds. But the Board should have also been sensitive to Vengsarkar’s financial status.

Here it may be useful to study the issue against the backdrop of international practice. Professional management is today the accepted norm. The recent Doha Asian Games were basically ‘managed’ by an Australian conglomerate, which had drawn data from its Sydney 2000 Olympics experience. British and Australian organisations have pitched for management jobs in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. The Brits offer their Manchester Commonwealth Games expertise, as well as the expertise they are gaining in the build-up to the London Olympic Games. The Aussies have the Sydney and Melbourne Games experience to back them. If India accepts their services, it can hold them to account for any glitches.

European soccer, especially the English Premier League (EPL), is a prime example of how professionalism has taken over the game’s management. The EPL is a professional body, managed as a corporation, answering to the many needs of the players, clubs and fans alike. It remains accountable to its shareholders for the billions of dollars that pass through its account books. It is similar in professional golf.

It is only when it comes to the BCCI that the set-up is a curious mix of market-oriented and amateur approaches, leading to situations where a national coach starts his work without a contract in hand, as in the case of Greg Chappell. It has no checks and balances in place, no fixed guidelines stipulating how a professional would be paid, and even the players’ cheques are often made out as and when accounts are done. The BCCI — registered under the Societies Registration Act as a non-profit organisation, depends on elected officials and hence cannot pay them. The entire system gets tilted towards a fringe-benefits world with inescapable conflicts of interest.

When the professional I-League, Indian football’s supposed equivalent of the J-League, was launched this year, extraordinary problems suddenly surfaced. If it was meant to be a professional body, would there be a general contract for players drawn up and vetted by the All India Football Federation (AIFF)? Will there be an insurance clause? Will the administrators be accountable to anyone? The clubs, which had borne most of the expenditure entailed in raising the game to the levels required by the Asian Football Confederation, shouted themselves hoarse, but the AIFF remained unresponsive. Meanwhile, the league continues with its amateur ways despite its new nomenclature.

The BCCI will have to sort out its identity crisis. On the one hand, it pretends to be a social body, a public charity. On the other, it is driven by the objective of creating profit. If profit is its impelling force, then it should come under the Companies Act. If charity is the byword, it should stop this ‘shamateurism’. The Vengsarkar issue has held the mirror to an unacceptable state of affairs. And unless things are sorted out, Indian cricket will remain in a limbo.

sujit.bhar@expressindia.com