The much respected P. Sainath, in
this
column in The Hindu way back in January 2012, expanded BCCI as Billionaires
Control Cricket in India. Although much of that article refers directly to Indian
Premier League, the essence of the article, almost three years since the date it
was published, has remained unchanged and unaddressed.
Sport has always thrived on
commercialization. The most popular sports are most often, the most commercialized in a geo-demographic region. In fact, it is more of a bidirectional
relationship. Adequate television and media coverage props up sports, as much
as valor and glory of sports, sportsmen and sportswomen do. There is a
difference of approach in selling a sport and promoting a sport, the latter in
most cases, is an investment which, in best case would lead to the former. The
difference here is akin to a company’s investment in its Research &
Development division. The return on investment is futuristic and speculative.
But it is essential to the survival of the company tomorrow. Without a healthy
investment in research, a company could perform well today but there is no
predictability and no guarantee of what might happen tomorrow. Most national and
international sport governing bodies recognize this fact and try to exploit it
to the benefit of the sport they represent. This seems to be exactly where BCCI
is getting its strategy wrong.
BCCI’s decision not to send in a
cricket team in both men’s and women’s events for the recently concluded Asian
Games at Incheon, is nothing short of appalling. The Olympic Council of Asia
was scathing in criticism when it mentioned that
BCCI
was killing cricket. Although that might be a harsh way to look at the
state of affairs, I do not have a sliver of doubt that the BCCI is muddling
into murkier waters in the handling of internal affairs. In my school days,
which was when Sachin Tendulkar had exploded on to the world stage and the
likes of Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid et al were beginning to offer a glimpse
of the bright future of Indian cricket, BCCI was a term very rarely seen in the
media. Cricket was a lot more about the on field happenings than what happened
in the confines of closed rooms in luxury hotels across big cities in India. Cricket
had established its roots solidly in India, and the increasing proliferation of
cricket matches, along with some extremely talents players and the emergence of
television for live broadcasting paved way for an explosion of cricketing
fervor. I’m certain BCCI did have a lot of role to play in the widespread
popularity of cricket in India. Those were the good days.
For reasons not completely clear
to me, somewhere along the line, things started going downhill. Maybe it was
the limitless amount of money pouring in as revenue, maybe it was the
increasing clout. Or something else that might be above my level of
comprehension. Whatever it was, proportionate to the increase in power, there
seemed to a fall in responsibility. Instead of an ultimate target of promoting
cricket in India (and abroad), BCCI seemed to fall into a notion to control cricket
(as its name implied, quite ironically!). Cricket in India that was not
sponsored or organized by BCCI was classified as “rogue” and was hunted down.
Indian Cricket League
was the biggest target, which balked to BCCI pressure after it was threatened
that players participating in ICL would not be sanctioned to play for their
countries. There is an ever-thin line of demarcation between between confidence
and over confidence, between absolute power and dictatorial audacity. That line
seems to have been crossed in case of the BCCI.
They say pride goes before a
fall. The BCCI would do well to print out that idiom and have it pasted on
multiple walls across the plethora of its offices in India. They would do well
to look and learn from what happened to the sport of field hockey in India (and
to a less extent, in Pakistan too). Indian hockey teams were considered among
the best in the world. This sport has the single largest contribution to
India’s Olympic medal kitty than any other sporting event. In its prime, hockey
used to be a crowd puller and was quite popular. I do not know this for a fact,
but I assume with a reasonable degree of conviction, that administrative
officials in Indian Hockey Federation (presently Hockey India) would have felt
their game to be invincible. Over the course of time, however, there was a
steady deterioration. The reasons for this are beyond my knowledge, and not core
to the topic at hand, but the very fact that this happened should make BCCI
take cognizance. That cricket might have had a big impact in the decline of
field hockey in India is an argument, but that should be juxtaposed with the
larger fact that in general, the decline of any sport(s) in any geo-political
region will naturally result in an increase in popularity of others, basing on
the assumption that people don’t, in one fine day, lose interest in sports
altogether. If it can happen with hockey, the national sport of India, it can (not
necessarily will) happen with cricket as well. The public perception of BCCI is
not very positive in itself is a big hindrance for the monolith. Couple that to
the fact that many of the iconic stalwarts of Indian cricket have retired in
the past half-decade or so, which has had a negative impact as well. In the
recent past and present, there has been an increasing emergence of club level
competitions in India like the
Indian Super League
(for soccer),
Indian
Badminton League and the
Pro Kabaddi League. The other sporting federations seem to have a
good idea of attempting to promote their sports, some (or all) of them might
succeed or perish, but the attitude is certainly praiseworthy and BCCI, with
its lax attitude, seems to be increasingly uncaring about what goes on.
Another aspect is the commitment
of BCCI to promote the sport of cricket domestically and globally. Well, they
certainly do have their task cut out when it comes to promoting cricket inside
India, they have a firm platform from upon which they need to invest very manageable
amounts inside India. But this is not the case with outside South Asia.
Considering the fact that cricket is by far not one of the more popular sports
worldwide, cricket administrators have a lot of room for improvement. A classic
example for this argument is
Federation
Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), and their attempts to
promote soccer worldwide. Soccer is the most popular and widely followed sport
in the world and yet FIFA realizes the potential of countries like India where
soccer is yet to make significant inroads and is aggressively investing in
bringing up facilities. BCCI should realize that they have a very firm
foundation from which they can launch cricket to a much wider audience, using
the significant presence of Indian diaspora worldwide. BCCI has to father this
responsibility as the most financially sound body among all the constituents of
International
Cricket Council (ICC).
On its part, the Government of
India must act to ensure BCCI remains what it is – a sporting body, and not
some supreme center of authority (money yes, but authority no). In an affidavit
filed at the Supreme Court of India,
BCCI claimed it
was an autonomous private body over which government has no control. If
BCCI, as it claims, is a private body and the players are technically the staff
on payroll of BCCI and do not officially represent the Government of India, I
fail to see the logic by which the Government of India can confer Arjuna Awards
on cricketers. Because technically Arjuna Awards are given to players
affiliated to various National Sports Federations which officially represent
India internationally. The multiple tax exemptions rolled out to BCCI in the
pretext that BCCI was a “charitable organization promoting cricket” were
needless and were rightfully revoked. And the government should prioritize getting
the BCCI under the ambit of Right to Information (RTI) act, which is possibly
the first step for controlling the economic anarchy that happens inside the
portals of BCCI.
I do not expect much from the
BCCI to happen, at least not until cricket really does start treading on a path
to downfall. That event might not necessarily happen. But there is a chunk of
people, this author included, who were slowly weaned away from cricket after
the retirement of some of the iconic legends in cricket that we grew up
watching. People like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly
mesmerized a generation of children and adults and to many including myself,
they represented cricket. Their retirements, along with all those off-the-field
cricket news that started to fill the media space today than on-the-field
cricket news, have weaned the interest of many. Too much of anything is seldom
good, and it seems the same thing has happened with cricket as well. Especially
with the advent of the
Indian Premier League
(IPL), one gets the feeling that there is an excess of cricket that happens in
the country. And for the cricket administrators of the country, this overall
should be a worrying trend. But am sure they won’t worry. Not until the train
actually leaves the station. That is when they will dust off and start the
process of introspection, which I fear, might be a tad too late. History points
to a similar situation happening with the national sport of India, hockey. BCCI’s
current (in)action points to that potentially happening some day in future to
cricket as well.
I’ll borrow the last sentence
from Mr. Sainath’s
article
I quoted at the beginning, “We need to think about how to revive the domestic
game, rescue cricket from the billionaires club and restore it to the public
domain.”
