The BCCI has a case to answer on IPL disaster

Can an annus mirabilis also be an annus horribilis? The Board of Control for Cricket in India is testing the possibility.

BCCI president Sourav Ganguly, left, with youthful secretary Jay Shah

Can an annus mirabilis also be an annus horribilis? The Board of Control for Cricket in India is testing the possibility.

A little over four months ago, Indian cricket was the toast of the world, and of itself, after Ajinkya Rahane’s men conjured a heady victory over Australia.

The team went on to secure a berth in the final of the World Test Championship and the board to launch into the 14th edition of its grand cricket bazaar, the Indian Premier League, confidently using its own grounds and facilities in defiance of a worsening public health disaster.

The blow of the IPL’s suspension, then, is greater than the presumed cost, which is being conservatively estimated at $390m; it is to the pride and credibility of the world’s most powerful cricket organisation. And its links are to the very peak of Indian affairs.

Although Sourav Ganguly is nominally president, nobody doubts that the power at the BCCI reposes chiefly in two shiny 30somethings whose election owes absolutely nothing to nepotism.

Secretary Jay Shah is the son of Amit Shah, prime minister Narendra Modi’s most repulsive henchman; treasurer Arun Dhumal is scion of a dubious BJP political dynasty from Himachal Pradesh.

Nope, nothing to see here: chosen on merit, 100 per cent.

When Modi sent congratulations to Rahane’s team after their victory down under in January, they sent responses that were not even slightly sycophantic.

Shah: “Thank you for your encouraging words, Hon’ble PM Shri @narendramodi Ji. This will boost the morale and energy level of entire Indian cricket for future challenges.”

Dhumal: “It is heartening to see our PM @narendramodi appreciating efforts of our boys in the cricket field. The young team has indeed inspired the country’s youth to take on any challenge with utmost confidence.”

Oh no, nothing even slightly political about Shah and Dhumal. They’re just two young cricket-loving fellows who know how to be polite to their elders.

So when it got to talking about the staging the IPL in India, they naturally gave not a second thought to the political symbolism of scheduling, for instance, a dozen games at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad soon after staging two Tests and five T20 internationals between India and England.

Nothing, as Dhumal explained patiently to The Indian Express on Wednesday, could have been further from their minds: “We all thought that after what the country went through in 2020, the IPL will boost the spirit of the country.” So kind!

But then, out of a cloudless sky, which was unfortunately about to be filled with the smoke of funeral pyres, came COVID. Errr, again. Not that it was ever away, but still …

“Who would have imagined such a situation will arise?” asked Dhumal on Wednesday. “Had we known, we could have held the IPL overseas.”

Like in the UAE, which the BCCI did … oh, that’s right, last year.

Who would have imagined? If only we had known! Kind of makes you wonder. What counsel did the BCCI take about the COVID environment? As distinct from its uncanny intuition about the national spirit.

Might its go-to counsel on epidemiology have been that noted expert Narendra Modi, who as recently as two months ago was declaring victory over COVID, and that India had “earned the confidence of the whole world” and “saved humanity”?

Authoritative reports from India this week are that the Modi government was warned by its scientific and public health advisers about the near-certainty of a devastating second wave of infection.

Did they do anything? Did they bollocks. There were religious festivals to celebrate, political campaigns to wage.

And in that way, the BCCI marched in lock-step with its country’s rulers, including in the pretence of its commentators that there was nothing remotely weird about cricket in big, empty grounds, and that the sixes were sailing through unsullied air.

Some of the BJP’s uglier gauleiters have gone so far as to prosecute individuals for tweeting out pleas for medical assistance, on the grounds it is damaging for morale and suggestive of a crisis.

Well, let’s just say that BCCI’s hand-picked commentators were not about to run any such risks.

As I explored last week, there was just the chance for the IPL to extract some legitimacy from the crisis, by putting its shoulder to the wheel of emergency relief. A few players made charitable donations; three franchises pledged funds. Good for them.

But then it all rather petered out, and from the BCCI there was two-thirds of diddly-squat, just a bizarre effusion from the IPL’s CEO, who told its participants that they were playing for “humanity” — the same humanity, puzzlingly, that India had already saved.

So the world’s richest cricket competition stumbled on, increasingly an emblem of the Indian government’s apathy and sport’s insularity, without so much as a black armband or minute’s silence let alone a financial or infrastructural contribution to relieving the burdens of its suffering fans … until the expensive cordon sanitaire was breached and we know the rest. We must now hope that 2021 does not become an annus terribilis for cricket itself.