Will Lodha panel report cleanse rot in Indian cricket?

A year’s wait has finally ended. There was much anticipation as to what the Justice Lodha committee will have to say about the BCCI and how radical will their recommendations be? Will they go to the root of the problem and try and restore fans faith that has hit rock bottom over the last few years because of the way the BCCI has functioned? Will they finally address the reasons why the Supreme Court was forced to say the BCCI has dropped the ball far too many times? And will they force the BCCI’s hand in implementing the reforms they have suggested?

There is already much debate if the recommendations are binding. Having spoken to the BCCI’s lawyers it seems they are banking on the fact that these are recommendations more than anything else. The BCCI, there is little doubt, will argue in the SC that the Lodha panel has gone beyond its remit and in doing so has ended up making suggestions that will work against the interests of Indian cricket. On the other hand the Lodha panel feels the SC, which had appointed the committee in the first place and had empowered it to do a thorough job, will reject any application the BCCI makes.

In terms of impact (if the report is implemented that is) will mean people like Sharad Pawar, Niranjan Shah, Farooq Abdullah, Kamal Kajaria, N Srinivasan and many others who are now part of the Board for years will have to resign from their positions asap. Most of them are past 70 and this is one recommendation which will be welcome across the board.

There are others who have served in top positions for more than two plus decades and they too will have to vacate their chairs. This means someone who has been a vice president for two terms will no longer be eligible for further election and anyone in the know of the BCCI will agree this is a welcome development. A VP’s post was used to placate supporters and was a practice that was directly opposed to the principle of good governance. By reducing the number of VP’s from five to one, the committee has hit the BCCI’s voting pattern directly.

The committee has also recommended legalising betting in India. This, however, is a contentious recommendation. Will this solve the problem of spot or match fixing? Does betting have any relation, direct and indirect, with spot or match fixing? Perhaps not. Legalising betting is welcome but whether or not this will stamp out the fixing menace continues to be debatable.

Finally, the committee has suggested that the BCCI should upload details of all its meetings on its website. Surely it can’t include selection committee meetings for example. And by bringing the BCCI under the RTI ambit cannot mean people can randomly go and ask questions relating to how Indian teams are chosen. Such things have not been made clear by the committee and have left quite a few unanswered questions, which will require clarity in the days to come.