It is nothing short of a small miracle that the Board of Control for Cricket in India continues to function the way it does, despite having lost most of the leading functionaries.
Since April, it has been one exit after another, sometimes voluntary and at other times forced by circumstances.
Mahim Verma resigned mid-April as the BCCI vice-president to return home and take over as secretary of the Uttarakhand Cricket Association. Next was BCCI secretary Jay Shah whose tenure ended in the third week of May when he completed six straight years in office at the state and national level combined, necessitating the mandatory three-year cooling off period.
A similar fate awaited former India skipper Sourav Ganguly when he too came under the six-year moratorium. That left treasurer Arun Dhumal as the only legitimately elected member on the BCCI apex council, the rest being nominated from outside.
This, of course, is subject to the Supreme Court review of the December resolution of the BCCI general body which seeks to separate the terms served at the state and national level rather than be clubbed together as is the case at present.
Besides the elected personalities, July also saw the resignations of chief executive officer Rahul Johri and general manager cricket operations Saba Karim, a former Ganguly teammate in Bengal and India.
With the BCCI appearing headless and consequently rudderless, it is quite an amazing feat that it has so far smoothly sailed through the troubled Covid19 times.
Quick to seize upon the International Cricket Council's announcement suspending the men's T20 world cup in Australia, BCCI announced the holding of the Indian Premier League in the United Arab Emirates. Without any official clearances then but with the confidence that it would be able to pull things off, everyone was slowly but surely brought on board.
Then came the fiasco about Chinese phone manufacturer Vivo as IPL's title sponsor. That too was deftly dealt with by suspending the contract for one season without any penalty to either party, thereby side-stepping any unseemly controversy following popular outcry in the country after the deadly trading of blows between the Indian armed forces and the People's Liberation Army of China on the line of actual control.
Search is on for a suitable replacement for IPL 2020 and BCCI has clearly indicated that it would be happy to settle for anything close to half of the Rs 440 crore that Vivo would have paid if it remained on board.
Such is the confidence that even with less than two months to go for the mega event to kick-off in UAE on September 19, and franchise owners looking to extract the maximum benefit from the beleaguered BCCI, it all appears to be smooth sailing so far, with acting CEO Hemang Amin of Gujarat in the hot seat.
It certainly is an amazing feat achieved by a national sports governing body that is without several top functionaries. Such is the clout that BCCI enjoys both within India and abroad that there seem to be few hurdles in ironing the creases along the way till things settle down finally after the much-awaited SC review.
Hats off to the people who can make it happen!
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