Opinion Shortcut to cricket’s big league is a warning
The BCCI allows a regulated transfer of talent by permitting three guest players outside the jurisdiction of an association to play for them in the senior team. But when malpractice ensues, guests become “native locals”, for money.
The Cricket Association of Pondicherry (CAP) has received grants from the BCCI to the tune of Rs 89 crore since 2018. Drawing a long arc in India, cricket was a British sport that became Indian. It was then internally democratised, transforming from a Maharaja’s game to the common man’s sport. It spread geographically, moving away from the cities to the hinterland, across the country. Through it all, holding the cricket story together has been the promise and principle of fairness and inclusion — that, for aspirants, the system would pose as few entry barriers and hurdles as possible. Strip away the notion of a level playing field, however, and what you get is an unravelling of the kind that is on show in Puducherry, as an investigation by this newspaper has revealed.
The BCCI allows a regulated transfer of talent by permitting three guest players outside the jurisdiction of an association to play for them in the senior team. But when malpractice ensues, guests become “native locals”, for money. The Puducherry story reveals coaches at private academies who offer backdated admissions in educational institutions and dodgy Aadhaar addresses, and even job records, to help cricketers from other states meet the BCCI’s mandatory one-year residency requirement and become “local” cricketers, all for “packages” up to Rs 1.2 lakh or more. With every such scandal, the democratisation of the sport takes a hit. If left unchecked, it can weaken the entire edifice. If there are hardly any local cricketers in the team, the message sent out to local talent is dispiriting.
The Cricket Association of Pondicherry (CAP) has received grants from the BCCI to the tune of Rs 89 crore since 2018. The financial records show nearly 60 per cent has been spent on infrastructure, but in a one-man proprietorship the lines blur. The irony is that the CAP came to be formed due to a cleansing process instituted by the Supreme Court. The Court-appointed Lodha committee’s reforms dictated “one vote per state”, which triggered the rise of new member-state teams, including Puducherry. The BCCI needs to investigate the checks and balances that are purportedly in place to find out how these events unfolded. As the parent body principally responsible for running the game, the buck stops with it. Preventive measures and swift remedial actions to ensure that the same breaches don’t recur are needed to nurture sporting dreams. Puducherry is a warning that other associations must also heed.
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