Here we are this week, back to the scandal in India’s Premier League (IPL), the story that refuses to die.
The ongoing investigation into spot-fixing in the IPL has spawned hope that the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India), which is responsible for administering cricket in India, will now be goaded into vacuum-cleaning the scams and scandals that litter its stable.
It’s no joke: the BCCI is to cricket what the United States of America is to global politics: a superpower with a swagger, in perpetual stupour because of its hubris, and defying norms it helped evolve.
Every four or eight years America gets a new president, but the lynchpin of its foreign policy remains the same: unrepentant and unrelenting global domination. This too is the unchanging goal of BCCI, irrespective of who is in the President’s saddle. Unless it reinterprets the meaning of power, the BCCI will remain what it is: a behemoth run amok.
The BCCI’s power springs from its financial muscle. Without the Indian market to bank upon, international cricket could well slide into abject poverty. It is this sobering fact that prevents other Boards from combining to resist the BCCI’s imperious behaviour.
You could say that the defining attribute of power is for its wielder to insist on overcoming the will of others. In 2011, Washington warned it would cut off its financial contribution to UNESCO should it vote for making the Palestinian Authority (PA) its member. UNESCO granted membership to the PA, and $80 million in US contributions were overnight adversely affecting its programs for 2012-2013.
Like the US, the BCCI manipulates the popular vote to have its way. When Tim May was elected to the ICC Cricket Committee, the BCCI allegedly mounted pressure to have a re-vote, in which some cricket Boards persuaded (or ordered) their representatives to amend their votes in the subsequent polling. After the victory of BCCI’s nominee L Sivaramakrishnan, there was a clamour to refer the matter to the ethics committee.
No less than BCCI luminary and politician, Rajiv Shukla, warned that India would think of pulling out of the Champions Trophy later in the summer, in case the issue wasn’t resolved satisfactorily. The ICC issued a press statement claiming procedural problems had prompted the re-vote, afraid that India’s pull-out could have dulled the sheen of the Champions Trophy and deprived it of significant revenues. Faced with the BCCI’s blackmail, the ICC often functions as ineffectually as the UN does in situations contrary to America’s interests. Take the contentious Decision Review System (DRS), which India adamantly refuses to accept in matches involving it, and is the only country to have boycotted it.
US thought invading Iraq to bring about a regime-change and usher in democracy, would be an antidote to terrorism. The reverse appears to have happened: it has expanded the breeding ground for militant Islamists and extended the arc of chaos. Similarly, the BCCI believed it could offset the dwindling crowds for the Tests through the IPL aka tamasha cricket, and the stupendous growth in its revenue could further consolidate its power.
The BCCI consequently privatised cricket, handing it over to a club of tycoons, some of them with a dubious past. This brought the bookies, who lured players to spot-fix. The BCCI can’t deny the stench of corruption, just as America couldn’t its mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet, replacing BCCI president N Srinivasan, who should have resigned considering his son-in-law has been accused of spot-fixing, will not likely transform the BCCI, just as a change in the American presidency doesn’t lead to a remarkable revision of that country’s foreign policy. American presidents tend to be more alike than different from each other because of the two-party political system the US has.
Similarly, the BCCI’s system of elections produces presidents who differ from each other in style, not substance. The mission of every president is to bloat the BCCI’s revenues and enhance its domination of world cricket. Perhaps it isn’t possible to achieve one goal without securing the other. In achieving both every BCCI president comes to resemble those before him, in behaviour and philosophy.
BCCI president Srinivasan may eventually be compelled to bow out of office, but the BCCI is going to change only incrementally, if it does at all, just as America’s foreign policy hasn’t with the coming in and going out of its presidents. To win the confidence and love of people, both America and the BCCI need to reinterpret the meaning of power.
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