Friday, February 27, 2009

BCCI at it again!

If you thought untouchability is a thing of the past, think again! BCCI has launched it all over again in a new avatar. Anyone who has got anything to do with ICL be barred from any contact with the outside ICL world. I am glad Lalit Modi hasn’t gone to court asking the ICL cricketers’ wives to be divorced from them. In a country where a proven match-fixer joins the ruling party without any hassles, we are treating professionals who made democratic choices seem like traitors.

Not so long ago, VVS Laxman wasn’t allowed to play for Nottingham because the county had ICL players in its ranks. Now, the god of all gods Sachin cannot play for a NZCPA’s XI because of the presence of Hamish Marshal in the team. Surely, it cannot get more juvenile than this. And the weird part is that even without any of BCCI’s hostility towards it, ICL is a far cry from the standard of cricket witnessed in IPL. Add that to all the non-sense that BCCI has been heaping on ICL, there is no way out for them.

Infact the surest way of suppressing ICL would have been to let it be. After the stupendous success of the first edition of IPL, very few players in ICL would have resisted the temptation to join IPL. In addition, the fact that IPL franchises have fatter wallets to spend on would have ensured that the best of ICL players would have been picked up by IPL franchises. That would have left ICL with no choice but to shut shop.

What would have been a simple market solution has now become a big, messy political and legal affair. ICC is caught in a no man’s land with neither the conviction to support ICL players nor the courage to oppose BCCI! And the respective cricket boards don’t have the backbone to support their own players at the expense of being in the wrong books of BCCI. Also, Subash Chandra hasn’t been particularly smart in striking a bargain with BCCI when the opportunity presented itself. It is a pity that some fine cricketers are lost in this utterly meaningless conflict. How I miss the sight of Shane Bond running in and delivering thunderbolts in test cricket…

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