Sports
India's sports atmosphere is getting vitiated (Column: Just Sport)
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By Veturi SrivatsaIndian sport is in an unfathomable churn, if not in total mess. The
cricket board officials are in cyclic hostility and the Indian Olympic
Association (IOA) is in an internecine war of its own with most national
federations in a moribund state.
A noteworthy coincidence,
brothers Narayanaswamy Srinivasan and Ramachandran have worked their way
up to occupy the two topmost positions in the country's sport around
the same time, the elder one as the cricket board president and the
other as the IOA chief.
And both suddenly seem to have fallen on
evil days. Srinivasan no longer enjoys the ruthless sway on the Board of
Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), while Ramachandran's equally
autocratic handling of IOA affairs has united his enemies who are now
out to oust him.
Srinivasan knows how quickly equations in the
board can change. One of the protagonists in Sharad Pawar's camp in
unshackling the board from Jagmohan Dalmiya's clutch early in the new
millinneum, Srinivasan got his pound of flesh when he forced the Maratha
strongman to use his prerogative as board president to get his
corporate house India Cements to own a franchise in the Indian Premier
League (IPL), the board later rubber-stamping the decision.
The
same Pawar, after welcoming Supreme Court verdict against Srinivasan in
the conflict of interest case, said it was a collective decision of the
board, not his alone, to allow India Cements to own a franachise.
Soon
Srinivasan as board secretary moved on from strength to strength to
form a powerful group of his own with Arun Jaitley, now union finance
minister, as his key adviser with board president Shashank Manohar a
willing ally.
The three essentially got together on a one-point
agenda of getting rid of the highly motivated Lalit Modi, the man who
gave the world a lucrative Twenty20 tournament. Their hatred for Modi
was such that even Pawar could not save the dynamic tycoon.
The
next move of Srinivasan was to distance himself from both Pawar and
Manohar and form a powerful clique with ambitious upstarts with strong
political connections.
The Supreme Court verdict in spot-fixing
and conflict of interest case saw Srinivasan's cabal disintegrating.
What hurt him most was Anurag Thakur, Bharatiya Janata Party Member of
Parliament (MP) and joint secretary when he was president, deserting him
and defeating his candidate for the secretary's post.
The
International Cricket Council (ICC) sent a letter to the Indian board
raising questions over Thakur's contacts with a well-known socialite on
the Chandigarh-Punjab-Haryana circuit and who it suspects to be a
bookie.
It is intriguing how this so-called contact got public
now, though the franchises were warned in 2013 - the year the
spot-fixing case surfaced - against meeting the suspect.
Thakur
was quick to hit back, first for making the ICC letter public with
"unverified" information about the antecedents of the so-called
"bookie." He would not stop there, in a tongue-in-cheek asked his former
boss to share the information on bookies with his "own family members
whose involvement in betting has been proved."
Dalmiya has
watched the fun from the sidelines. Having experienced Srinivasan's
wrath a decade ago, he doesn't want to rush in. Thakur also knows
Srinivasan, too, well to go whole hog against him. The Himachal Pradesh
Cricket Association president obviously called the media over to make
conciliatory noises, insisting that the board is not on a witchhunt or
vendetta and that it's job is only to promote cricket.
As luck
would have it, Dalmiya and Thakur got a handle to attack Srinivasan on
the demerger of the Chennai Super Kings for a mere Rs.5 lakh! They also
have the carrot of ICC chairman's post to dangle. A cat-and-mouse fight
is on.
Thakur and others in the board know that Srinivasan's fate
is in the hands of the Supreme Court appointed committee and once the
report is out a fresh flare-up is expected.
If Srinivasan could
keep his flock happy doling out the board's money, Ramachandran has no
such cushion to buy out loyalty, except obliging his cohorts with a
place in the official delegations to the major multi-discipline
international events like the Olympics and the Asian and Commonwealth
Games.
Ramachandran's opponents are up in arms for the way he and
the sports ministry arranged the one-day visit of the president of the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach to meet Prime Minister
Narendra Modi in Delhi without taking into confidence even the
secretary general.
What angered the IOA members, and also the
IOC, is his inability to put together a bid for the 2024 Olympic Games
after assuring Bach that he would have something to discuss with the
Indian prime minister.
Worse, the whole visit was an embarassment
for the prime minister, the IOC chief as well as the IOA. Bach clearly
told the government that India was not in a position to bid for the
Games.
The immediate offshoot is that maverick president of
Hockey India Narendra Batra raised the banner of revolt against
Ramachandran, using Bach's visit. It is to be seen whether the
rebellious group could muster a two-thirds majority to unseat the chief
with a no-confidence motion, but the egotistic Batra has a long-range
plan of grabbing power himself.
Normally, the tenure of the IOA
president is for four years, between two Olympics. In 2012, Abhay
Chautala was elected president and Lalit Bhanot the secretary general,
but had to vacate their chairs under the new IOC charter which barred
charge-sheeted officials from contesting elections.
The ruling group put up Ramachandran as its candidate, thinking they could manipulate him and run the the IOA by proxy.
Ramachandran
will have none of it. He started acting on his own and that led to
friction. The Olympic bid fiasco has only worsened matters.
Now,
Ramachandran insists he should get a full term of four years in office
from 2016 since he is now only serving as a stop-gap president. True to
the Indian style, a lot of unseemly factors are vitiating the
atmosphere.
(Veturi Srivatsa is a senior journalist. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at [email protected])