Opinion Get back to the game
The BCCI vs Court drama has gone on for too long. It must hasten to its climax.
Rather than strip the Indian cricket board’s powers with a single, definite stroke, the Supreme Court has embarked on a clinical and methodical way of strangulating the BCCI. In an interim order a fortnight ago, it directed the board, and the banks, to not allocate funds to those state units which hadn’t accepted the Lodha committee recommendations in totality. On Friday, it told the board to not furnish them funds, until and unless they give a signed affidavit promising to adopt the reforms. Just as importantly, it directed the Lodha panel to “fix a limit on the value of contracts the board can enter.” This is significant because the auction for the IPL rights, both telecast and digital, is scheduled on October 25, and is expected to involve keen bidding and astronomical amounts of money. An independent auditor will be appointed, whose clearance is required for all the high-profile contracts, besides fixing the financial upper limit for every contract. The apex
court’s method seems clear — to hit the board where it hurts the most: Asphyxiate its financial dealings, paralyse its financial arms and the board will eventually “fall in line” with the reform.
All the same, the board has got itself a little breathing space, since the court didn’t overhaul the current
structure and set of office-bearers, as the Lodha panel had recommended to the Supreme Court in the status report filed on September 29, citing the fact that the BCCI hasn’t followed the deadlines and recommending that the top brass be “superseded”. This affords the BCCI think tank some time to formulate its next step, before the hearing on December 5, when it will have to inform the court about the reforms it can embrace and those it can’t. A month before that, a meeting has been scheduled between president Anurag Thakur, secretary Ajay Shirke and the Lodha committee. Hopefully, this will be a constructive meeting, instead of an exchange of fire between two mutually antagonistic bodies.
There must be a more definite outcome in the hearing on December 5. The sequence of events has already consumed far too much time — 556 days, to be exact — apart from the money and energy involved. For the sake of the sport and its fans, the courtroom drama should hasten to its climax.
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