DNA Edit | The return of Shastri: The sport, its audience, and due process undermined

Who knew that the Board of Control for Cricket in India could give Hollywood thrillers a run for their money? While Ravi Shastri made it as the coach of the Indian cricket team, his appointment was pockmarked by one-upmanship and turf battles happening behind the cricketing body’s closed doors. On the surface, Kohli and Shastri may appear to be victors, but it is the game, its audiences, and due process that have emerged as the absolute losers.

From this murky episode and numerous political manoeuvres, the impression that the BCCI will wily-nily concede its clout to the superstar players has been irrefutably reinforced. Reams have been written on BCCI’s financial and administrative improprieties. Millions of cricket fans, enthusiasts, and those disadvantaged by BCCI’s opaque functioning, who had welcomed the Lodha committee reforms, have been left high and dry as the Committee of Administrators has complained to the Supreme Court that people with vested interests — N Srinivasan and Niranjan Shah — are stalling the implementation of the reforms.

At a time, when the image of cricket in India has already taken a drubbing, the expectation was that key issues that have ramifications for India’s on-field performance will be above board. This notion was dispelled when Kumble was unceremoniously ousted from the team. A pithy mobile text from Kohli to a BCCI official complaining about Kumble’s ‘overbearing’ nature was a strong enough buzzer to show the leg-spinner the door. This, despite the fact that under Kumble, India lost just one test match out of the 13 that were played at home.

Obviously, a disciplinarian Kumble’s stern attitude did not sit well with players who have come to identify themselves as superstars doing a favour to Indian cricket. Another sorry aspect that surfaced from the fiasco was the flimsiness of Kohli’s vaunted claim of the ‘sanctity of the dressing room’.

Many now know it for the hogwash that it is. When it suits the players, leaks conveniently find their way to newspapers and TV channels, if not directly from them then through PR managers, agents, and other categories of middle-men.

Kohli may not have been very vocal in front of the media, but that doesn’t mean he has come through unscathed from this series of events. Those from the inside circles have accused him of running a hush-hush campaign against Kumble. Whatever may be the truth of these allegations, one feels sorry that the BCCI boardroom, which could have put up a resolute, principled front turned into putty in the hands of these superstar players.