CHENNAI: The BCCI finds itself between a rock and a hard place. Long before being buffeted by the winds of the Lodha panel formed to recommend reforms in cricket administration, the richest cricket board in the world had fallen afoul of the Supreme Court and its current Chief Justice.
Friday will be the real day of reckoning when the CJI’s bench may pass orders about in toto implementation of Lodha panel recommended reforms.
It is anticipated that the defiant office-bearers of the BCCI — president Anurag Thakur, secretary Ajay Shirke and treasurer Anirudh Chaudhry — will be given the marching orders. They are at best hoping for the indulgence of the court to give them some more time to adopt the reforms.
However, it is more likely that the board will get a top court-appointed panel of administrators to replace the ones who went against Lodha panel edicts governing BCCI conduct and decisions at the recent annual and special general meetings.
The exchanges between the court and the BCCI lawyer Kapil Sibal proved as entertaining as the game itself as Sibal promoted Mr Thakur, the ruling party politician who is the BCCI president, as a Ranji Trophy player (he played one game for HP) to which the CJI shot back he had led the Supreme Court XI against the Bar Association XI of lawyers in one match.
