A few doses of accountability will not hurt Indian cricket

Intentionally or otherwise, Vijay Mallya has unleashed a wonderful, but hitherto unknown, word into Indian cricket. We have always plodded along in Indian Cricket and accountability was this word from another language that occasionally filtered through our barriers. We knew it existed, as we did at various times achtung and détente and glasnost or even shiraz and tom yum. But it didn’t really affect us. Now, all of a sudden, we are having to face it and the reaction of the cricket community has been amusing and yet, understandable.

Cricket has always had this exalted air to it. Cricketers who had jobs never went to work and spoke about it as if that is how it was meant to be. It wasn’t the employers who were doing them a favour, they were permitting themselves to be employed. Very few learnt new skills and very very few could become successful in another world. And so, the one reaction we are getting to what happened with the Bangalore Royal Challengers is “but cricket is different”.

Sadly, it isn’t. And as cricket moves into the era of corporate management, and profitability, image and return on investment become key criteria, everybody will have to become accountable. At one level the cricketers are, because they get dropped if they don’t score runs or take wickets and that will be extended to coaches and managers. It happens in football all the time. But it is a different story with India’s cricket administrators who know what the word means but who are enjoying looking the other way.

And so ticket scams have been brushed under the carpet, balance sheets are closely guarded secrets, stadiums continue to be mediocre and officials who do things that hinder India’s progress towards becoming a cricketing power continue in office long after their incompetence has become common knowledge. Which is why I must reiterate my great desire; that cricket be slowly corporatised so that first all limited-overs cricket and in course of time, all cricket is run by franchises. I am not suggesting that all corporate houses are perfect or that everything the BCCI and its affiliate bodies do is wrong but corporate entities have to worry about things like image, return on investment, profitability and the consumer and often when that happens, you are forced to be right most times because otherwise you don’t survive.

Related to this, more as a second cousin than as a brother, is the issue of taking the moral high ground with discipline. Harbhajan Singh has now been issued a five-match ban and I think he will be relieved, more than anything else. I am not sure I agree entirely with penalising a person twice for the same offence but I am absolutely certain I disagree with the manner in which the most recent investigation was conducted.

... contd.

Ads By Google

Message*	Maximum characters allowed

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*

TERMS OF USE:
The views, opinions and comments posted are your, and are not endorsed by this website. You shall be solely responsible for the comment posted here. The website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted or part thereof. You shall ensure that the comment is not inflammatory, abusive, derogatory, defamatory &/or obscene, or contain pornographic matter and/or does not constitute hate mail, or violate privacy of any person (s) or breach confidentiality or otherwise is illegal, immoral or contrary to public policy. Nor should it contain anything infringing copyright &/or intellectual property rights of any person(s).

I agree to the terms of use.