To whom is the BCCI accountable?

In our daily professional and personal lives we are all very much accountable to the people who are our near and dear ones, like our family, friends and our bosses, colleagues in our offices. There are hardly any group of professional people who are not held accountable for their actions. The board of control of cricket in India (BCCI) is however one such so called professional organisation which has nothing to do with words like accountability, responsibility for their own member’s acts.etc. The BCCI  has been running the Indian cricket for over 75 years now and one thing which has not changed in all these years is the casual and care a dam attitude of the board officials towards the cricket fans of this country who are the real reason behind the immense popularity of the game.

To quote a recent example in a long list of instances of the shoddy and disgusting attitude of the egoistic BCCI officials, the Indian team returned after the twin success of the champions trophy  and the tri series in the Carribean, there was a gag order from the BCCI ( read Srinivasan ) on the players not permitting them to give any media bites and interviews with the media. Poor Rohit Sharma reacted very naturally to the simple innocuous questions posed by the media personnel  and  he answered the questions in a normal manner not speaking anything malicious against the board or  any controversial topics like selection matters. The end result was that he was issued a show cause notice by the BCCI for failing to follow the gag orders issued by the board. In another instance, Cheteshwar Pujara  the newly selected captain of the India A team which will be touring south Africa was asked regarding his reaction to being appointed captain and the prospects of the India A in south Africa . The BCCI  also issued a notice asking him to explain his recent behaviour in the media.

Both the players are the future prospects of the Indian cricket team which is in transition and by restricting them or any other players the BCCI has only shown that it does not care for the  Indian cricket fan, media and country at large. Even the current sports bill cannot be passed in the parliament as the BCCI does not wish to come under the RTI act. The reasoning given by the BCCI is fairly simple in that they do not take any financial aids from the government of India and being a private organisation, they are not accountable to the public domain. If the BCCI does not agree with the points in the present sports bill, there could arise a situation where  the team which would be playing on the park would be called the BCCI team and not the national team. This would be a very sad state of affairs in the long and illustrious history of Indian cricket. Whenever a player or a group of players have tried to form a players association   or try to revolt against the dictatorial regime of the BCCI, all the so called factions of the board have come together and played manipulative games and safeguarded their own centres of power in the Indian cricketing circles All the players know very well that if they go against the board their flourishing career could   be jeopardised in the long run. Such is the vindictive nature of   the board that even former great players like Kapil Dev and Gavaskar also cannot go against the whims and wishes of the BCCI.

By ordering media gag on these players who have tasted phenomenal success in the recent past, the BCCI is not doing any favour to Indian cricket. The media and the cricket fans have a legitimate right to know the success story of these players and so the next generation can draw inspiration from its cricketing heroes. By banning the media which was very rightly hounding   N Srinivasan for his lackadaisical attitude in the betting and spot fixing matter which had emerged during  the IPL-6, the former board president has turned vindictive  against the media and even though he has stepped aside as the board president for now, everyone who knows the BCCI is fully aware that Mr  Srinivasan is calling all the shots off the field. The BCCI must understand that they have taken the word  “control “ a tad too seriously and in actual circumstances it is the average Indian fan who is the real controller of cricket in this country.