BCCI is like a spoilt child: Kirti Azad

Former India cricketer Kirti Azad has expressed his unhappiness regarding the attitude of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Azad mentions that the board operates like political parties do and that the recommendations were the best thing to have happened to the sport.

“BCCI is like a “spoilt child”. When Lodha Committee said that enough is enough and the game can’t be run like this, this spoilt child, after his toys have been taken away from him, is crying,” Azad was quoted by the Times Of India.

“Everywhere there’s a ruling party or group and the opposition, except for the BCCI. It’s a united alliance – united in corruption and alliances for position. It’s a classic mix of UPA and NDA. The board president was once with UPA (Sharad Pawar) and now is with NDA (Anurag Thakur). Jyotiraditya Scindia lost the BCCI vice-president post and still became a part of BCCI’s most powerful finance committee. Rajiv Shukla lost the post of treasurer but he also became the IPL chairman. Nobody is a friend or a foe in BCCI. The money has kept them together,” said Azad.

Azad also said that these recommendations have come at the right time to save the game, otherwise it would have suffered the same fate as hockey.

“Cricket isn’t anybody’s property. The current officials feel that BCCI is their personal fiefdom. We supported the recommendations and intervened in the Supreme Court. You see how hockey suffered because of bad management. Once it was the most popular game but now general public doesn’t even know the names of our players. These recommendations have come just at the right time to save cricket,” he added.

Azad also believes that if the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had worked in an unbiased manner then all those who were involved in the 2009 Indian Premier League (IPL) scam would have been behind bars. He also suggests that the Lodha recommendations should be applied in all sports federations all over the country to eradicate corruption.

“Lalit Modi is an honest man in comparison to all these officials. Modi was chairman of IPL and if he did anything wrong, why was he allowed to do wrong things. The signing authority was N Srinivasan, who went on to become president. Why did he sign cheques as treasurer? Why didn’t all top BCCI officials oppose that time? If Srinivasan or whosoever signed the cheques, it means they all knew what was happening. Why was only Lalit Modi was targeted?”

“There were so many big politicians like Sharad Pawar, Arun Jaitley, Farooque Abdulla, Rajiv Shukla, Scindia, Anurag Thakur involved, and they didn’t know the law of land? If ED works in a proper manner, I feel every member of the Governing Council will be proved to be a culprit.”

“We have signatures of 50 and more Olympians now. We will go to the Supreme Court and urge them to do similar thing in other sports too,” he added.