Surprisingly, the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) has decided to relook the current prohibition on Indian head coach Ravi Shastri and India ‘A’ and U-19 coach Rahul Dravid from commentating in the Indian Premier League (IPL). It was a pretty shocking move in for even the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) officials as the directions of the Lodha Panel which under the conflict of interest clause, which clarifies that the likes of Shastri and Dravid cannot be commentating (dual role) during IPL 2018 as they already hold important positions with the national and ‘A’ team.
The Lodha committee recommendations had clarified that contracted coaches should not perform dual roles as it amounts to the conflict of interest. In fact, Dravid was given a 12-month contract in 2017 after his previous contract with the ‘A’ and U-19 teams were for 10-months, having a window of 2 months for the IPL.
Speaking to CricketNext, a senior BCCI official member said: “COA’s decision to take a relook at the conflict of interest rules in order to consider allowing Shastri and Dravid to commentate in the IPL is yet another evidence of their capricious conduct. They have not been honest to their job and have looked at everything through the prism of bias and as a result, though they are supervising the administration of the BCCI, their thinking is adversarial to the board and this reeks of dishonesty in their actions.”
He further elaborated, “A prime example is their suo moto decision to disallow those disqualified from being office bearers to participate in even committee meetings of the BCCI while specifically asking N Ram to be a part of the committee even though he is above 70 and disqualified to be an office bearer. Additionally, nothing can be more hypocritical than Vinod Rai chairing the COA meeting despite having turned a sweet 70 while himself having spared no effort to disallow everyone else who is a shade over 70. This is like the behavior of the child who wants to bat twice merely because he owns the bat.”
Another official asserted similar kind of sentiments and said that the committee has not been honest in carrying out the job at hand and that has created an unwanted mess.
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The official explained, “They have themselves stated that they agree with a few impracticalities like the presence of the CAG representative on the Board. However, the insincerity in their conduct and shades of vindictiveness prevent them from truthfully expressing these issues.”
During CoA’s meeting on April 12, they took a decision to not allow Shastri and Dravid for commentating during the 11th edition of the IPL, but there was a twist. The CoA decided to separately consider whether a cringing should be made to the Supreme Court to re-look the conflict of interest provisions under the draft memorandum of association and rules and regulations of BCCI recommended by the Lodha panel so far as the same is not in the interests of Indian cricket.
