This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
“Rahul Dravid is the sort of person who wanted everything to be good. He knew that what was happening was wrong but he did not have the guts to revolt and say that it was wrong…” said Sourav Ganguly about his former captain and current Indian coach in 2011.
Ganguly, who now heads the BCCI, has got his wish with Kohli: the Indian Test captain has shown the “guts to revolt” against the all-powerful cricket board with his frank talk about being replaced as captain of the 50-overs cricket team.
It proves Ganguly misled the media about the episode. Perhaps Greg Chappell (or even Dravid) was not far off the mark with his assessment of the Prince of Kolkata.
But this is not about Ganguly, or Ganguly versus Kohli, even though Kohli has made the boldest call of his career. To focus on these personalities is to miss the larger point about today’s BCCI and its relationship with power politics.
After the intervention of the Supreme Court and as per the Lodha Committee recommendations, Ganguly and Jay Shah should have stood down in mid-2020. They should have been ‘cooling off’ for three years each after spending six years as cricket administrators in a state association or BCCI.
Nearly 18 months later, they are still in harness. The Supreme Court is not concerned, mirroring its stance in even more critical cases like the one on electoral bonds or on the scrapping of Article 370.
#ViratVsBCCI #RohithSharma DH on Saturday caricature @DeccanHerald pic.twitter.com/HUvjguZ0ua
— sajithkumar (@sajithkumar) December 18, 2021
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The person who directly connects the power structure of cricket with that of politics is BCCI Secretary Jay Shah. He is the son of the country’s second most powerful leader and Union home minister Amit Shah and his star has risen dramatically in the past few years.
Under him, the reconstructed Sardar Patel stadium in Motera was named after Narendra Modi by the President of India, in the presence of Shah Senior. He is also convenor of the BCCI selection committee, which played a major role in the Kohli saga.
Shabir Hussein Shekhadam Khandwawala, former director-general of the Gujarat police, heads the BCCI’s anti-corruption security unit, and was reportedly appointed by Shah without inviting applications. He had also crossed the age limit of 70 years, mandated by the Supreme Court for BCCI officials. Khandwawala has moved a proposal to buy snooping equipment, ostensibly to check match-fixing.
Reports say that “BCCI officials, especially those not in sync with the present set of administrators (read: Shah Junior or Union Sports Minister Anurag Thakur’s group) are worried that surveillance could well be done against them to crush the opposition in the board.”
The BCCI treasurer is Arun Dhumal, younger brother of Union minister and former BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur. Their father is former BJP chief minister of Himachal Pradesh P.K. Dhumal. The BCCI treasurer controls the coffers of one of the richest bodies in sport, with a net worth of Rs 18,011.84 crore.
In 2020-21 the BCCI earned Rs 2,658.20 crore (compared to Rs 3,366.11 crore in 2019-20) and its expenditure was a mere Rs 808.06 crore (compared to Rs 2,176.77 crore the previous year). As per income tax rules, the BCCI has to show as expenditure 85% of its receipts every year.
Moreover, the accounts were made available to all members only three hours before the AGM, even though they were passed in the BCCI’s Apex Council a day earlier. The financial report is usually shared with all members at least 15 days in advance, after the finance committee meeting.
Since 2014, the BCCI has budgeted at least Rs 830.32 crore to fight court cases, particularly the one in the Supreme Court that triggered administrative reforms in Indian cricket, and to implement orders.
The BCCI is represented by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, a huge favourite of the government. However, he does not appear in cases involving the government. It did not surprise many when the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal recently ruled that BCCI’s income from organising the IPL is tax free, upholding its status as a charitable organisation. For the BCCI, charity definitely begins at home.
Steve Waugh memorably quipped that “In India, cricket isn’t just a sport, it’s a religion.”
Those who run the BCCI are the priests who own this religion.
Ganguly is a virtual nobody in this politically powerful cast of characters. At best, he is a ‘mukhauta’ or a mask, who has taken one on the chin for those who really run the BCCI. They are intimately connected to, if not proxies of, the political leadership running the country. The shenanigans in the running of the BCCI mirror the trickery and deceit at play in the running of the country. That is the real message from the Kohli saga.
