N Srinivasan, who also happens to be the secretary of the BCCI? All this may be entirely meritocratic, but hasn’t the cricket establishment heard anything about conflict of interest? If the BCCI, a non-profit “society”, is supposed to supervise and regulate Indian cricket and also the IPL — which is its prime, and most profitable, product — should its office-bearers own teams in it? And can their brand ambassadors (on their payroll) be national selectors?

The Chennai team may be the most obvious example of conflict of interest, but there are so many others, in so many franchises. Sporting bodies around the world, even the venerable International Olympic Committee, are exclusive clubs. But the BCCI, now mostly fuelled by the arrogance and money-power brought in by the IPL, is setting new standards that may not strike you as so brazen if you are inside the “tent”, or in the cricket establishment’s “dugout”. But if you see them as an outsider, as an ordinary fan and as a public commentator with no commercial interest whatsoever, but with a great, great vested interest in free comment, they suck.

The BCCI has now come to acquire powers over media coverage on its own doings and performance that nobody in India has ever been able to arrogate to themselves, not under Mayawati, or Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency. During the Emergency, the government censored our newspapers, it got some inconvenient editors fired, but it did not appoint its own employees as our editors.

Look at what the BCCI has achieved. It has hired Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri, two of India’s most-loved former cricketers and commentators, on its own “commentary” team and irrespective of which channel wins the bid for covering cricket in India, it has to use these — in this case the BCCI’s — commentators. Incidentally, both are also members of the IPL governing council.

... contd.