Editor,
The news report published on June 22 regarding the Shillong Cricket Association’s letter to the BCCI concerning MCA Apex Council member Mark Ingty’s positions in cricket administration warrants a strong and unambiguous response.
Mark Ingty is not merely an office-bearer. He is a senior figure of considerable standing in Meghalaya cricket, respected by players, administrators, and followers of the game alike. The fact that he has earned a call-up as a Ranji selector within the Assam cricket set-up, while continuing to serve the game at the state level, should by any reasonable measure be celebrated. It reflects well on Meghalaya cricket that one of its own has been entrusted with such a prestigious responsibility. Any administration that genuinely championed the interests of this association and its players would have taken pride in that fact.
Instead, what we witness is something altogether different and deeply troubling.
It is difficult to comprehend, in any straightforward reading of cricket’s constitutional or regulatory framework, how Mark Ingty’s current positions cause any material prejudice whatsoever to the Shillong Cricket Association or to anyone else. The SCA’s letter, forwarded to the BCCI through MCA Secretary Rayonald Kharkamni himself, raises questions that are as convenient as they are contrived. If there was a genuine concern, whether administrative, constitutional, or otherwise, basic decency and courtesy would have demanded that it first be raised directly with Mark Ingty.
Instead, the matter was escalated without warning, without courtesy, and without conscience, straight to the BCCI, with the press in tow. And even Kharkamni thought it was procedurally right to do so. Utterly shameful. That tells you everything about the intent behind this exercise.
It is now becoming evident that the guns being aimed at respected members of this cricket community are Rayonald Kharkamni’s, even if they are being fired from the shoulders of others. SCA President Peter Kharsawian has chosen to lend his office to this campaign seemingly without pausing to consider for even a moment how the players’ community of Meghalaya would receive such malicious and undignified an attack on a figure as revered as Mark Ingty.
Let this serve as a clear and candid warning to those who believe they can draw power from an institution while simultaneously undermining the very people who built it: cricket associations exist because of players. They derive their legitimacy, their purpose, and their moral authority from the men and women who have given their sweat and their years to the game.
When administrators begin targeting those very individuals for petty institutional warfare, they do not weaken the players, they hollow out the associations themselves.
Cheap shots of this nature are not governance. They are not accountability. They are not reform. They are the conduct of men who have confused their offices with personal kingdoms and who would sooner tear down a respected name than examine the state of their own standing.
The cricketing community of Meghalaya and Shillong is watching. And it will remember such actions. The players’ community should stand together with Mark Ingty and condemn any such attack on a senior sportsperson of Meghalaya.
Yours etc.,
L. Kharwanlang,
Via email
SCA Should Point Fingers at Themselves First
Editor,
The recent statements by Shillong Cricket Association President Peter Macdonald Kharsawian in your esteemed publication, positioning himself as a concerned voice on the MCA crisis, deserves a pointed response, a response that members and club owners affiliated with the SCA are perhaps too polite to make openly, but which needs to be said.
Macdonald’s public commentary conveniently omits a rather important personal history. It was MCA Secretary Rayonald Kharkamni who facilitated Macdonald’s entry into a previous MCA Apex Council, an arrangement widely known within cricket circles to have been gravely irregular, perhaps illegal. That too while Macdonald was already holding a position in the SCA — making it a direct conflict of interest.
The two were close allies. When Macdonald subsequently concluded that he stood no chance of winning the MCA elections, the “beautiful” friendship soured and he rushed to the Meghalaya High Court last December seeking to set aside those very elections and challenged Kharkamni. True drama. This was not for purposes of principle. This was a man who, upon finding the door closed, decided to burn it down and ultimately did not receive a favourable response.
He then repositioned himself as a supporter of James Sangma’s side which he acknowledged in the recent press conference. That association perhaps and apparently was not beneficial enough for Macdonald. And so, with the pragmatism that has come to define his career in cricket administration, he has found his way back to Kharkamni, his original patron, in the hope perhaps that old arrangements might be quietly restored.
This reunion deserves particular attention, because Kharkamni is not just a figure of financial controversy at the MCA, which has also been in the media recently. He is the same Secretary under whose watch the sexual harassment of players from the MCA Under-23 Women’s team was allegedly covered up, which is a matter that has been raised before the Meghalaya State Commission for Women and is very much alive. Macdonald has chosen this moment, with these facts in public circulation, to publicly align himself once again with Kharkamni and this speaks volumes about where his priorities lie.
It is not with the sport. It is certainly not with the young women who were failed by the very administration Kharkamni presided over. And yet, Macdonald this is the man now presenting himself in the media as a voice of accountability on MCA governance.
The irony will not be lost on anyone who knows how the Shillong Cricket Association is actually run. The SCA has the highest number of registered clubs of any district association in the state. It generates more revenue than any other. Yet Macdonald has stated publicly in the press conference that the SCA does not have money.
Club members are entitled to ask: where is the money gone? Because what club owners of the SCA know — and what has never been discussed openly until now — is that since Macdonald took charge, membership fees have frequently been collected in cash. Not bank transfers. Not cheques. Cash. And the accounts? The bank statements? They have never been placed before member clubs.
There is a saying that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Macdonald has chosen to throw quite a few this week. Before he offers any further commentary on governance failures at the MCA, we would ask him to explain, plainly and with documentation, how the SCA’s cash collections have been accounted for, and where the money of its member clubs actually sits.
As members of clubs of the Shillong Cricket Association, we have a right to answers. And we are no longer staying silent. The public aren’t fools.
Yours etc.,
S. Lyngdoh,
Via email
