The face-off between the Supreme Court and Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is a good reflection of the confusion that constitutes cricket administration in India, caught between big money, jingoism, politics, and questionable ethics. It is no surprise that a case that began as a means to apportion punishments for a spot-fixing and betting scandal involving the Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2013 has ballooned into a crisis between the apex court and BCCI. In the latest development, the court has deferred its order to Friday. A closer look at this imbroglio suggests that neither institution has helped the cause.
It is certainly unusual for the judiciary to dictate how a trust, that too one that does not involve taxpayer money, should be run. It has been argued that intervention is warranted since the BCCI also oversees the Indian team. But, globally, the nature of modern sports as a business - in which national tournaments are just one element of a dynamic industry - is very different. In Indian cricket, too, things are changing rapidly. Unlike in the past, when national teams constituted the sole buyer of talent, now owners compete in a free market for sporting talent. Earlier, this domestic talent came to the market via state associations affiliated to the BCCI. However, the IPL altered this dynamic and is becoming the key money spinner for BCCI. So the argument that the BCCI can be instructed because it uses the "India" name is becoming weak. In India, the "nationalist" predisposition has been dominant because of the BCCI's roots in the colonial struggle, which explains the overlap with politics. As long as the monopsony prevailed, the BCCI's manifest administrative weaknesses attracted little attention.
The state and judiciary's role here is the same as it would be for any industry: As with the relatively efficient western sporting jurisdictions, they are required to act as facilitators and intervene when laws are violated. The Supreme Court duly did so by banning two IPL franchisees for two years for their involvement in insider betting deals. It is unclear why it should have expanded its ambit to form a panel to reform the BCCI, that too with binding recommendations. One proximate comparison would be with the Satyam scandal of 2009 in which the government intervened to salvage the company. Ramalinga Raju's crime, which was duly punished, did not prompt the government to dictate how the company should be structured and run by its new owners, Tech Mahindra. It did, however, make changes in company law to ensure that such crimes were not repeated.
It is worth noting that the Supreme Court rejected the Lodha committee's most significant recommendation: To legalise betting. This single change will go a long way towards reducing the closed circuit betting that has corrupted the game since a transparent listing of odds is an easy indicator of match- or spot-fixing. That said, the BCCI's senior officials also deserve criticism for inconsistency. By filing a review petition rightly questioning the judiciary's prerogative to make law and then cherry-picking the Lodha panel's recommendations - some of which were certainly unexceptionable in nature - they have laid themselves open to the apex court's wrath. In that sense, they too have done players and fans no favours and for that reason alone they deserve little sympathy in the dialogue of the deaf.
