Captain inspirational who’s a status quoist

Rohit Mahajan

Extreme self-confidence in sport, a necessity for excellence, is just egotism by another name. Without absolute confidence in self, a sportsperson is nothing. We love it in sportspersons because we deem them as proxy soldiers, fighting for the nation. In reality, what the sportsperson is fighting for is far more complex — the desire to excel, the desire to impose oneself over the adversary and win, the desire to be a champion and hero of a nation.

We fall for the image of a great leader, even a great actor. When the great Kannada actor Dr Rajkumar was kidnapped by the bandit Veerappan in 2000, a colleague in Bengaluru, a diehard fan of the actor, half expected Dr Rajkumar to march back into the city with a reformed Veerappan in tow. We expect our heroes on the field of sport or the silver screen to work miracles in real life — Imran Khan next door, for example.

Similarly, when the great Indian cricket team leader Sourav Ganguly became the president of the Indian cricket board (BCCI), much was expected of him — finally, a Cricketer-King! After such high hopes, only disenchantment must follow. Retired First-Class players are upset that their pensions and benefits haven’t increased. Women’s cricket, on a high after the 2017 World Cup, has become stagnant. There have been long delays in payments to domestic cricketers. The mess over the captaincy of Virat Kohli — probably the most important Indian cricketer right now — was wholly unnecessary and very disappointing, for it showed Ganguly in a bad light.

Entrenched power

It seems Ganguly, like the non-cricketers before him, is more interested in consolidation of power. When he was elected BCCI president in November 2019, his term was to last till late 2020: The Supreme Court-mandated constitution of the BCCI limits the tenure of officials, and the terms of Ganguly and BCCI secretary Jay Shah were to end in 2020. But they continued to hold the reins. The Lodha Committee reforms, by sweeping aside the old guard through new age/tenure rules, made it possible for a cricketer to become president; Ganguly, however, like a pawn, is one with the BCCI in the efforts to dilute the reforms so that the president and secretary could remain in office for two consecutive terms, ie six years in all.

Saddest of all is that Ganguly is pursuing personal commercial interests in a manner that does no credit to the office he occupies. His personal endorsement of an online fantasy cricket game is especially galling, for it could push impressionable young people towards games of chance.

Commercial interests, and perhaps bad advice, make even middle-aged former players do odd things — thus, Ganguly, 50 next month, put up a cleverly-crafted tweet this week, suggesting he was going to take a really big decision in the near future — ‘as I enter this chapter of my life’. This created a buzz — was he going to resign and join politics? No, it turned out to be something much bigger than this — money. Ganguly was going to sign a new endorsement deal with an education app.

Courting trouble

It’s the season of courts removing sticky office-bearers. Last month, the Supreme Court chucked politician Praful Patel out of the president’s office at the All India Football Federation (AIFF). This ended Patel’s 13-year stint at the helm with not much to cheer about. Indian football continues to be mired in mediocrity with skewed priorities: The focus is on top-level leagues — especially the Indian Super League — rather than the game at the grassroots, and AIFF’s academies have been shutting down due to lack of interest or funding. AIFF tried to push up interest by bidding for international events, but heightened interest won’t create players — grassroots infrastructure, coaching and mentoring will.

AIFF is now in the hands of a court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) — it’s the third sports body that has been placed under the governance of a court-appointed CoA this year, the others being the Table Tennis Federation of India and Hockey India.

The three federations are accused of unprofessional functioning and non-compliance with the National Sports Development Code (NSDC). Yet, most federations remain defiant, refusing to amend their constitutions. The Delhi High Court has now directed the Sports Ministry to stop the funding of the federations that violate the NSDC.

There is rich irony in this judicial intervention — the BCCI was put under a CoA as far back as 2017, with the efforts of more than one Chief Justice of India. They got a new constitution drafted and mandated for the BCCI. This constitution can be modified only with the permission of the Supreme Court — yet the officials have gone ahead and passed a resolution to amend it! All this under the watch of Ganguly, the inspirational leader; but then, by 50, most people learn to stop trying to change the world and adapt and compromise — this seems to have happened to our fiery cricketer and inspirational leader, too.

#BCCI #Cricket #jay shah #sourav ganguly