Kirti Azad takes a jibe at CoA, tags them as 'toothless tigers'

Kirti Azad came out all guns blazing against the Committee of Administrators (CoA) by calling them as toothless tigers. His comments about the advisory committee arrived in the aftermath of Ramchandra Guha‘s vociferous letter of resignation to the CoA.

In his letter, Guha slammed the CoA for its ineffectiveness to control over BCCI on various agendas and cited the powerlessness of the committee over the Board and its players. Guha while resigning also pointed the loopholes in the system, starting from coaching to commentary and the contracts of star players.

Guha did not spare legends such as Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Rahul Dravid and even MS Dhoni in his resignation letter to the CoA. Kirti Azad backed the cricket historian for his move and termed the committee as powerless while stressing on the superstar culture prevalent in BCCI.

Ramachandra’s gist of irregularities within the Board

“You can call COA as a toothless tiger. BCCI has been doing things on its own and that superstar culture will keep developing if the Board does everything internally,” told Kirti Azad to News18. Azad arrived in support of Guha’s claim that MS Dhoni does not deserve a Grade ‘A’ contract especially after the retiring from Test Cricket voluntarily. The historian further expressed that it was only due to the stardom of Dhoni that he was handed the central contract.

“Unfortunately, the superstar syndrome has distorted the system of Indian team contracts. As you will recall, I had pointed out that awarding MS Dhoni an ‘A’ contract when he had explicitly ruled himself out from all Test matches was indefensible on cricketing grounds, and sends absolutely the wrong message.” said the former administrator of BCCI. Citing the conflict of interest within the personnel engaged in commentary and coaching, he further accused the likes of Sunil Gavaskar and Rahul Dravid of promoting unethical practices due to their stature,

“Sunil Gavaskar is head of a company which represents Indian cricketers while commenting on those cricketers as part of the BCCI TV commentary panel. This is a clear conflict of interest. Either he must step down/withdraw himself from PMG completely or stop being a commentator for BCCI.” added Guha.

“BCCI in its carelessness (or otherwise) might have drafted coaching/ support staff contracts to allow this dual loyalty business, but while it might be narrowly legal as per existing contracts, it is unethical, and antithetical to team spirit, leading to much jealousy and heart-bum among the coaching staff as a whole. This practice is plainly wrong, as well as antithetical to the interests of Indian cricket.” concluded the renowned columnist.