Shashank Manohar needs to redeem BCCI

The ‘musical chairs’ at the BCCI never seems to stop even as the ‘game of thrones’ keeps popping up at regular intervals like episodes of popular teleserials.

Curiously, there seems to be such a paucity of fresh talent that the top post always seems to go to one who has served before. There hasn’t been a new face for years now and this is set to continue for a while more at least.

The late and lamented Jagmohan Dalmiya was the one who set the trend of a comeback, which has been a pretty regular affair so far as the Indian team goes. Mohinder Amarnath was the celebrated king of comebacks on the field. Dalmiya may have taken after him for he was the one summarily dismissed from the BCCI and came back to head it.

But wait, there may be more to come. Shashank Manohar, the official with the straight talking, no-nonsense image, is set to come back as the top honcho. Candour is such a prized commodity in the cricket community that they celebrate it. The history of it all is such that transparency was considered a vice and the last few years proved how extremely opaque the BCCI could get.

It’s almost like back to the future and it will probably be if Sharad Pawar garners enough support to come back as Prez. And no one can rule out the displaced honcho Srini, who is short of support from the very base he used to rule with a virtual unanimous majority till not so long ago, coming back some day. If a banned Jaggu Da could stage a comeback, why not the TN strongman who whipped up fierce loyalties like Sepp Blatter in soccer until scandal caught up with him?

In going out of the way to patch up with Sharad Pawar by seeking him out in Maharashtra, Srini may have made the statement that he will not merely be content to head the world body in ICC. His rapprochement with Pawar is suggestive of moves to stave off his men being isolated within the BCCI a well as in trying to fight to try and restore the teams that have been banned from the IPL by a committee appointed by the highest court in the land.

A measure of unanimity in administering the board is obviously being sought. It’s a pity his group did not look at it that way when they were in power. The current round of politics in the BCCI, now controlled by the BJP and Arun Jaitley, is for a throwback to an earlier era when the board was following its constitution rather than rewriting it to suit individuals.

Unfortunately, the new Prez would not be from the East whose turn it still is as Dalmiya had a limited run.

The manner in which the BCCI was rendered headless was a bonanza for secretary Anurag Thakur who ran it without any controls for a while now. While there has been no reason to complain of deficiencies in governance in single person assuming all powers, it is learnt that he has been liberal with raising salaries of some persons holding posts connected with cricket in the BCCI as opposed to pure administration.

The new BCCI boss with a reputation for clean hands will have to put in a reforms process soon to peg BCCI back to being driven by principles rather than just personalities. This was happening over the last few years when dictatorial tendencies meant no one was much the wiser about what was really going on. Shashank will have to redeem the board’s reputation first as it lies in tatters after the verdicts of Supreme Court appointed probe and commission.