What do they think of themselves?

by Raja Baradwaj

They scuttled Australia's chance of hosting the next world cup to bring it this side, which was okay. It could be appreciated as a shrewd political maneuver by the BCCI to rake in more money.

They arm twisted the ICC to make Sharad Pawar its chief. It was still okay, the BCCI was doing what the English had been doing all this while.

They came up with all sorts of stupid bans to hurt ICL and the young players involved. They had started crossing the threshold, power was getting onto their heads. I was thinking what more could they? Where are we heading?

Overnight a monkey becomes Maa Ki. It was fine, knowing what a Harbajan is capable of. But when Maa Ki comes at the cost of a tour, it becomes a very ugly Maa Ki. Harbajan might not have said anything, Symonds might have been right, but that question of who was right looses its relevance the moment when a board steps in and says, "just say my man didn’t say, else I would have the tour cancelled". Made me try guessing what next from BCCI.

In came Ranatunga, the cow swallowing cricketer (as per Shane Warne, the great IPL ambassador) as the head of SL cricket. He was heard saying, the ban on ICL players and umpires to participate in the domestic cricket tournaments is off. Pat came the reply from BCCI, "at the cost of us stopping the aid we promised for SL cricket". And bang came a clarification, this lifting of ban is only till the end of the 2008 season. I was laughing my guts out about what a joke cricket had become in the hands of the "chosen ones", the Noah's of the present day's cricket.

They even threatened the poor Bangladesh board to submission when (many of) their players joined the ICL, by offering to do more for Bangla cricket and accommodating more of their players in IPL. I thought fantastic, it couldn’t get worse.

And now, the despots at BCCI have gone a step ahead. They have supposedly put on hold all bilateral series against Sri Lanka. So what happens to the FTP calendar? And more importantly what happens to the authority of ICC?

There are also people who see a conspiracy theory in this putting on hold of all the bilateral series. They claim the BCCI is afraid that certain favorite cricketers of them might have their career' buried heads down if they are pitted against the quality duo of Mendis & Murali again. BCCI is enforcing this hold strategy to avoid this possibility.

As a bored cricket lover I would like to say…

Enough of this boardroom cricket, let's start playing cricket on the fields again.

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