Indian cricketers are busy at the game of fouling up a gentleman’s game. The Indian cricket team is doing quite well under Virat Kohli. The number of fans of the game in India has not dwindled. The country earns an enormous amount of money out of the game, the largest in international cricket. An Indian, Shashank Manohar, is chairman of the ICC. And yet Indian cricket is a victim of singular lack of statesmanship which casts a shadow over world cricket. India has threatened to pull out of the Champion Trophy as it demands that it should grab the lion’s share of the revenue from the ICC. Indian cricket is in the hands of crony capitalists and self-seeking politicians. They talk of market economics. They rake in the most money and so they expect to get the most. The Supreme Court has taken a dim view of their attitude. One cannot take these self-styled economists seriously. The BCCI looks like a babe in the woods.
ICC is also very much at fault. If the Indian representative is absent, how can the world body carry on important financial committee meetings? The ICC’s objectives cannot be above suspicion. They hold no talks about preserving the decency of world cricket which is very much on the decline. The two-tier test structure does not solve the problem. The chief administrators should sit together and thrash out the problems facing international cricket. The bigger picture always matters. Whatever deadlock there may be has to be resolved. But can cricket administrators be expected to show the necessary statesmanship?
