Why the BCCI isn't able to pay for England's expenses

Tanay Tiwari 22:33 04/11/2016
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  • BCCI secretary Ajay Shirke has written a letter to the English team’s manager Phil Neal asking the ECB to foot the bills for the visiting team’s stay, travel, and logistics in India.

    The BCCI is in a fix. With all the allegations leveled against it, you knew a day would come when someone will say, ‘enough’. When the apex court of the country stood up and said that, there was a sense of relief.

    For long, the BCCI has performed way better off the field than team India did on it. It has made colossal amounts of money, grown as the most influential body in world cricket, and has had its way almost always.

    That stopped as soon as the Supreme Court intervened after various allegations were leveled against the cash-rich IPL and the people at the helm of the BCCI.

    The Supreme Court appointed a judicial committee to probe into the allegations and hand over its recommendations.

    This is where the BCCI’s ordeal started.

    Not used to taking orders, it denied accepting a majority of these recommendations. Not used to hearing no, the Supreme Court came down hard (after giving the board a good number of opportunities to comply).

    After various rounds of hearings, the Court on October 21, stopped all payments from the BCCI to the state associations and also restricted its ability to enter into various contracts.

    This meant that not only was the auction of broadcast rights for the IPL indefinitely postponed but also the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was to be signed between the BCCI and the ECB was postponed.

    A MoU in this case is simply a contract where the host nation in a bilateral series agrees to pay for all the expenses of the touring side. These expenses include the hotel bills, travel bills and logistics related expenses.

    The BCCI has made it clear that they approached the Committee seeking permission to sign a MoU with the ECB. The Committee in response refrained from entering the realm of cricket policy related matters. But the Committee refused to grant permission to release funds without having the requisite details of the payments to be made as per the MoU.

    In response, Shirke then sent the unsigned draft of the MoU to the Committee. As of Friday, the Committee has not approved the release of funds. Hence, the letter from Shirke to the ECB.

    All of this, remember, while the English cricket team already landed in Mumbai and been stationed at a plush five-star facility.

    There is an argument that the BCCI can pay for the English team’s expenses without having to sign a MoU that isn’t flawed either. In the past, host boards have paid for the guest’s bills without signing a MoU. But, those boards didn’t have embargoes imposed on their transactions.

    Also, regardless of what the BCCI can and cannot do post the October 21 order, why should a simple contract between two boards on cricket policy be stalled at all? The release of funds for paying for your guest’s bill shouldn’t require judicial wisdom’s application.

    The Supreme Court in 2005 in the case of Zee Telefilms v. Union of India, held that the BCCI was not an organ of the ‘State’ and thus its internal dealings cannot be questioned. Calling the BCCI an ‘autonomous body’, the Court also opined that what it does during its ordinary course of business should not be meddled with.

    But the BCCI has grown exponentially since 2005 and has had its share of misdeeds too. Through the due process of law, it must be punished accordingly.

    But, what must not be forgotten, is that the BCCI runs a game which enjoys a place in Indian households like nothing else.

    Whenever a cricketer steps on the field, in a jersey with the BCCI’s badge on their chest, he/she also wears the label of ‘Team India’. The Apex Court must remember, that to protect the sanctity of that label is as much their duty as it is to set things right within the BCCI.

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