Cricket’s remote controllers

Watching BCCI officials openly sparring over control of the IPL this week reminded me of the story about the cats, the monkey, and the cake. Remember it? Seeing two cats unable to decide if a cake is divided in equal halves, a monkey offers to arbitrate and gobbles it up himself.

The Indian Cricket Board has always functioned like a private club of 30 individuals, each with voting rights. The members have changed over the years, they’ve fought with each other almost relentlessly for control, but despite the differences, their hallmark has been the ability to stick together — impenetrable in defence and united in attack — when faced with an external adversary.

The latest fight within the BCCI over the premature termination of the IPL contract with the sports management firm IMG, however, seems to have opened a strange new chapter in the Board’s functioning. For the first time, those inside the BCCI are seeking support and forming alliances with people outside, thereby giving the tussle a more public dimension, and highlighting the fragile balance that has been created with the extension of cricket’s largesse to influential stakeholders who can no longer be ignored.

What until three years ago would’ve been an internal battle between IPL commissioner Lalit Modi and Board secretary N. Srinivasan has now transformed into a war or words involving some of India’s leading industrialists, actors and politicians — most of them not members of the BCCI, but all of them seemingly in a position to demand why changes are being made without their approval.