(This is a reprint from NewsBred).
Indian cricket is basking under the sunshine from playing fields but the stench from its boardrooms could give a pigs' colony a fair name.
Ask if you can the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators
(CoA) of whom only two are left --Vinod Rai and Diana Eduljee--why a Rahul
Dravid can't coach an IPL franchisee team while Ricky Ponting, an
assistant T20 coach of
Or why a Ravi Shastri, the voice of IPL, must not be allowed behind a mike even though Mark Waugh, an Australian selector, is a regular in a commentators' box during the T20 Big Bash.
A Sunil Gavaskar must shut down the players' wing of his pioneering Professional Management Group (PMG) if he wants to commentate on IPL and could only look in envy at someone like Michael Vaughan who runs a talent-management company and broadcasts on the game unhinged.
The same is true for the support staff of Indian team--Sanjay Bangar, Bharat Arun, R. Sridhar etc--who can't be a part of IPL even though trainers and masseurs associated with other national teams are allowed to ply their trade in the T20 showpiece.
For heaven's sake, ask the CoA how they can stop a Sunil Gavaskar from speaking to media even as they cut him in half in the name of "conflict of interest." Or what's the "conflict of interest" is when the Indian team's masseur is massaging the soft tendons of a player during the IPL.
The CoA can't think beyond the perceived "moonlighting" of its stable. Who are we to tell them that while the world would come over and discuss, learn, share, prepare a dossier on everything related with Indian cricket and cricketers, our very own would be twiddling their thumbs, munching popcorns in front of TVs for two months.
Who are we to tell these fogies that
And if we may ask these chumps how there is no "conflict of interest" when a COA Diana Eduljee extends a purse of Rs 15 lakhs to her sister whose achievements are laughable compared to those ignored among Indian women cricketers, as coach Purnima Rau went away alleging.
Why there is no "conflict of interest" when a Sourav Ganguly
could head the Cricket Administration of Bengal (CAB) and still be a part of
governing council of IPL? Ganguly was commentating during the Champions' Trophy
in
Trust me, someone like James Sutherland, CEO of Cricket Australia, would be laughing his guts out for he had his son Will Sutherland represent Australia as a vice-captain in the recent Under-19 World Cup in New Zealand without this nonsensical "conflict of interest" hanging over his head.
The Supreme Court last January appointed CoA to implement Lodha Reforms in BCCI within six months but its twice the time over and the bull hasn't stopped dancing on the shards of a china shop it destroyed in the first place.
The architect of this whimsical and convenient interpretation of "conflict of interest" was no other than anglophile fake historian Ramachandra Guha who was also a part of the CoA appointed by the Supreme Court before he quit last year. Guha, as a rule, runs contrary to the interest of Indian heritage and polity and now has left Indian cricket scarred too.
It's this supine meekness towards "whites"
still running world cricket which stops the CoAs to
empathize with our very own. Barring Gavaskar, one couldn't find any
other Indian commentator during the recent Test series in
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