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Cricket honcho put in his place

Crux of the problem was Mr Srinivasan’s untenable position as head honcho of cricket

In a landmark judgement akin to the waving of a magic wand to cleanse the game of cricket, the Supreme Court has ruled that Narayanaswami Srinivasan cannot contest the Board of Control for Cricket in India presidential polls for now. In ordering a fresh poll in six weeks, the top court has demolished the position of cricket’s strongman who is also chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC), unless, of course, he can shed his commercial interest in the Indian Premier League franchise Chennai Super Kings in six weeks.

In judicial terms, this verdict is the equivalent of the Italian prosecuting magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Porsellino of Sicily, who dared to take on the Italian Mafia. For years, the Indian top court had desisted from ruling firmly on cricketing matters even if obvious malpractice was vitiating all the principles of justice associated with a gentleman’s sport that was synonymous with fair play.

The ruling that strikes down any conflict of interest in the form of a cricket administrator having a commercial interest in the IPL, which is an out-and-out commercial product, has a very sound basis in law. In all previous cases involving the BCCI, the courts had taken the ambivalent view that it was not a “state” and hence its functions could not be judicially reviewed. Only the extreme matter of unprecedented corruption in the IPL — players spot- and match-fixing and owners with privileged positions gambling on the game — prompted the judges to draw a clear line in the sand.

The crux of the problem was Mr Srinivasan’s untenable position as head honcho of cricket in which he was a virtual dictator controlling opposition and throttling any opinion not in line with his way of thinking. The fact that as managing director of India Cements his was the controlling interest in Chennai Super Kings led to all the problems. Expensive legal action prolonged the issue. But then, given Mr Srinivasan’s intransigence, any reform was unlikely unless ordered by the highest judicial authority in the land. The court has now also appointed a powerful panel of three former top court judges to rule on the quantum of punishment for erring team officials, in effect claiming a voice in what cricket will do from here.

Mr Srinivasan has to give up his favourite IPL franchise or his ambition to cling to the post of BCCI president. His position as the head of ICC is in jeopardy too as he is at present ineligible to be BCCI president. He could put in peril the very future of IPL if he wishes to challenge the verdict. Cricket has been given a priceless opportunity to ensure it is clean from here on, for which all cricket fans owe a huge debt of gratitude to the two judges who have assailed the monopoly of control that existed in BCCI.

( Source : dc )
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