Conflicts behind conflicts in cricket

Judicial activism in cricket has bared open conflicts in serious areas such as financial markets.

Representational image | Indian cricket team standing for the national anthem during the 2019 cricket World Cup | ANI Photo

Why does the honourable Supreme Court’s very well-intended endeavour to reform the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) now have Indian cricket look like a patient that a surgeon cut open but isn’t sure how to stitch it back?

Why is the Indian cricket team, to begin its defence of the ICC Champions Trophy in England with a crunch match against Pakistan on Sunday, answering questions from BCCI representatives about why it hates its coach rather than focus on the game? Why is Indian cricket — the playing element, mind you, not the officialdom — looking more divided than ever since Greg Chappell tore it apart? Which is saying a lot.

I shall be prudent enough to avoid the temptation of saying something like, because I told you so. It would not just be impertinent, but also risky as one of the eminent retired judges, assigned by courts to run Delhi cricket, has already threatened a reporter asking him questions about free passes to his own, and the involvement of his daughter, with contempt of law. And another lawyer assisting the CoA and Lodha Committee (for a fee) has already warned critics that the court’s patience may be running thin with them.

The undeniable facts, however, must be stated. From the most dominant global power, in the field and the boardroom less than a year ago, Indian cricket is in an almighty crisis. Just the talent and motivation levels of Virat Kohli’s team will hopefully carry them through the Champions Trophy. But the fact is, in the dressing room the team and its management are divided. In the ICC boardroom, India is relegated from all-conquering pre-eminence to a mere tail-wagging poodle under fiat from the CoA appointed by the honourable court to manage BCCI and implement reforms. Which in turn is riven with its own discords and multiple conflicts of interest. Here, we as cricket lovers owe much gratitude to historian and public intellectual Ramachandra Guha for being such a brave whistle-blower, never mind that we may not agree with all his views.

Judicial intervention in cricket began four years ago, with the spot-fixing controversy and the setting up of an inquiry under retired Justice Mukul Mudgal. It continued escalating in the following years and finally the honourable court set up a committee of three retired Supreme Court judges under former Chief Justice of India R M Lodha. After 12 months of hard work the committee produced a report suggesting radical changes in BCCI governance. The court instructed the BCCI to implement these by end-October, 2016. When they flunked the deadline, it fired Board President Anurag Thakur and Secretary Ajay Shirke. It appointed a CoA on the advice of the Lodha Committee to ensure that the reforms were implemented and to govern the board in the interim. This is when the law of unintended consequences took over.

The head of CoA, we can reasonably guess, was probably chosen by Justice Lodha as his faith in former Comptroller and Auditor-General Vinod Rai is well-documented. While serving as CJI he had put the management of Kerala’s super-rich and controversial Padmanabhaswamy Temple under a court-appointed committee’s administration and asked Mr Rai to lead the audit of its finances. Later, when Justice Lodha was appointed by a Supreme Court bench to head its committee to reform that other controversial acronym, MCI (Medical Council of India), he again included Mr Rai in it. So Mr Rai was also a logical choice to head the CoA. As for its remaining three members, Vikram Limaye, the CEO and managing director for Mumbai-based financial powerhouse IDFC Ltd (and holding company of IDFC Bank) was most likely picked by Mr Rai, who serves as non-executive chairman of the same company. How Diana Edulji and Mr Guha got selected isn’t clear though both are — or were until this week — non-controversial.

The CoA has now been working for four months with total power over BCCI and a Supreme Court cricket bench willing to meet at short notice even for routine issues like clearing a mere Rs 2.5 crore to Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association for hosting the India-Australia Test in Dharamsala. How much has been achieved by way of enforcing the Lodha Committee reforms, isn’t clear yet. Nor is there any clarity on how long the CoA intends to be in control, since the court has set no deadline and it isn’t in the nature of Lutyen’s-trained super-bureaucrats to give up power on their own.

Meanwhile, on the world stage, India has suffered a major defeat — in fact a capitulation comparable to Pakistan’s in Bangladesh in 1971 — with its failure to even oppose so-called reforms in the International Cricket Council’s power, revenue distribution and voting norms. From being the leader of the pack of the Big Three (with Australia and England), India, undefeated so far, now suffered a 13-1 humiliation. Not because it lost a fight, but because the CoA never let it fight. How total and draconian is its control over cricket, please see from the series of memos it wrote to BCCI, forbidding them from any action, speaking at ICC, even filing an affidavit in an Indian court. In so many years of covering government and politics, I do not recall many (if any) sarkari memos worded with such finality.

Our cricket team is now divided, captain and coach are at war, applications for the coach’s job have been invited when a mini-World Cup is beginning. On top of it, an eminent member of the CoA has made some of his letters public, making insinuations of incompetence on his colleagues, failure to implement reforms and casting a shadow over two players who will be key to India’s performance in the ongoing Champions Trophy: Captain Virat Kohli and seniormost player Mahendra Singh Dhoni. This, surely, wasn’t the script the court, intervening with the most sincere intentions, had written.

Mr Guha’s letters have exposed many well-known conflicts of interest on the part of players, especially former stars. This is important whistle-blowing even if the CoA’s charter was to fix conflicts in the BCCI management instead. But among the unintended consequences of judicial activism in Indian cricket has also been a new light on another set of conflicts in even more seriously important areas: The ethereal world of highly regulated financial markets, banking and bureaucracy-corporate networks and nexuses. Only this constant focus on CoA has reminded us that Mr Rai, who heads the central government’s all-powerful Banks Board Bureau (BBB), reforming and restructuring public sector banks, is also the chairman of IDFC which promoted IDFC Bank, a private competitor of government banks. Then, he chooses his own CEO Mr Limaye as a member of the CoA to assist him.

This becomes more fun. Mr Limaye has been selected for the coveted job as CEO of National Stock Exchange (NSE) where nearly 80 per cent of all Indian transactions take place and which has not only been headless for months, but is also undergoing three levels of forensic audit for alleged trading manipulations and irregularities. But he cannot take charge as markets regulator Sebi won’t clear his appointment unless he ceases to be a member of CoA.

You have to admire Sebi for its sharp regulator’s eye and courage in questioning an appointment backed by formidable bureaucratic powers in pointing out the conflicts that Mr Limaye’s twin role will entail. Most IPL franchisees have one or more company listed and traded on the bourse he is to head, and going ahead, all franchisees, private companies, intend to list. So can he be on both sides, BCCI and NSE? And can the CEO of India’s pre-eminent stock exchange have time and professional equity to spare for something as time-consuming and controversial as running BCCI? How much time can he spare from his duties at IDFC is between him and his board (Chairman?) and shareholders. But Sebi is right to demand clarity. Other conflicts have emerged, such as BCCI giving its audit contract to a firm owned by an NSE director and a member on the committee to select NSE — cancelled after questions were raised.

Two weeks ago, The Economic Times said Mr Limaye has indicated to Sebi that his job at the CoA will be done by August, and even if it isn’t, he will request the court to relieve him. Where does it leave Indian cricket if after Mr Guha another CoA wicket inevitably falls in the next two months? And does NSE meanwhile languish headless. Earlier this week, financial papers reported yet another forensics audit in its affairs. And, as this column is being written, my ticker tells me Ravi Narayan, vice-chairman of NSE, has resigned as Sebi fast-tracks its probe into charges of illegal algorithmic trading on the exchange. This leaves a doddering NSE totally headless.

More conflicts in the same stratospheric world of high finance and banking will be bared in the coming days, all an unintended and welcome consequence of a judicial intervention to clean up cricket. Once again, the story will be the same, nexus of cricket, money and power, though in a different way. When the CoA took over, Mr Rai had said he was like a cricketing night-watchman. But power always seduces the finest, and cricketing power seduces absolutely.