Chennai: A proposal being mooted in the wake of the BCCI deciding to consider asking players to run two franchises in IPL-9 is that Team India’s ODI captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, be given one of the teams to handle as player and manager. If that happens, Dhoni would also be seen in action in the next IPL season as wicket-keeper and captain. Otherwise, Dhoni, who is so identified with the Chennai Super Kings franchise that he might consider not playing for any team other than his club which has now been banned for two years.
If he is given the managerial role of a BCCI team, Dhoni would find no loss of identity or conflict of interest, although such issues are bound to crop up with board members certain to throw up queries. The firm (Rhiti) which manages Dhoni will, however, not be given ownership of the team. The ownership can remain only with the BCCI if it decides to keep the two IPL slots vacated by the suspension of the Super Kings and the Royals.
The logic of the proposal gains some currency considering that Dhoni is already the part owner of a football franchise and a hockey team and he had also owned an international motorcycle racing team. He has rich experience in owning sporting teams and such a proposal making him a manager-player could be mooted in the BCCI regardless of whether Mr N. Srinivasan is back in the board in a position to back the proposal.
Sources close to the former BCCI strongman and current ICC chairman say that Mr Srinivasan is determined to attend the next Working Committee of the BCCI. It is also being said that since he has met conditions like having to disassociate from ownership of the Chennai Super Kings, he is in a position to consider standing for election as President of BCCI whenever an election should come up. He was made ineligible to stand for the post in March this year by directives from the Supreme Court but the situation may have changed since the last election was held and Mr Jagmohan Dalmiya was became president. However, the top court would have to clarify if indeed Mr Srinivasan has become eligible again to be BCCI president.
The current rumours doing the rounds about the health of the BCCI president Dalmiya are by no means new. They have been around ever since he took over the reins. Placed in the post with Mr Srinivasan’s blessings because the ICC chairman did not want Sharad Pawar to be given a route back to become president, Mr Dalmiya voted in the BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur in a clever strategy by splitting his two votes between the two candidates.
Thakur and Srinivasan have subsequently made up after Mr Arun Jaitley was said to have advised the duo not to attack each other in public and keep bringing disrepute to the BCCI, already in a tangle in the top court thanks to Mr Srinivasan’s many conflict of interest issues. The equations in cricket change quickly and moves are already afoot to bring about another power struggle to the fore on the basis of Mr Dalmiya’s ill health and his inability to attend to BCCI work on a sustained basis.
The candidature of the IPL Governing Council chairman, Rajiv Shukla, a former minister in the Manmohan Singh cabinet, Ajay Shirke, former vice-president of BCCI and Jyotiraditya Scindia, former Congress minister, are already being discussed if Mr Dalmiya does decide to step down on health grounds. But Mr Dalmiya is unlikely to oblige just on the strength of some ‘political’ demands for his resignation. He may wish to remain in the seat and allow Thakur to run the BCCI with advice from Mr Jaitley and other seniors like former BCCI president Shashank Manohar.
Mr Shukla met Mr Dalmiya on Wednesday for a long chat, leading to further speculation on what is going on in BCCI in the wake of the stringent punishments handed down by the Justice Lodha committee. As brother-in-law of a powerful BJP minister (Ravi Shankar Prasad), Mr Shukla might have made himself acceptable as a candidate to head the BCCI in the event of a vacancy arising at the top. However, any decision to change the BCCI from top down will have to be taken in consultation with Mr Jaitley who will now have to report back on major cricket matters to BJP party president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
It appears right now that the suspended teams may not wish to pursue legal appeals against the verdict since it has been passed based only on IPL rules and regulations. There may be very little scope for an aggrieved party to seek redress when the in-house rules themselves support and sanction such action because team owners / officials bet on the game and, ironically, against their own teams.
