Six Slips, No Catches

Who plays cricket in the Northeast? It’s football cou­ntry. That’s the common per­­ception the rest of the country has held on to for a long time. But does the reg­ion’s culture have little space for cricket, or has the BCCI systematically killed the sport in Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Manipur, Naga­land and Mizoram? Its opposition to their entry into mainstr­eam Indian cricket is as bewildering as it’s unjust. Despite a Supreme Court judgement ordering BCCI to grant them the same privileges as its other constituents, there has been no progress. Since the BCCI has not granted full member status to these states, they cannot compete in all the women’s and men’s tournaments, including the Ranji Trophy. Furthermore, they have no power to vote in Board elections or have access to the National Cricket Academy. Shunned thus, cricketers from these states virtually have no platform to exh­ibit their talent, and so there is not a single player from here in the Ind­ian Premier League, where everyone makes their moolah.

No BCCI associate and affiliate member can compete in the Ranji Trophy, the Duleep Trophy or any other senior tournament; their participation is restricted to the under-16 and under-19 categories, that too amongst themselves. Last season, the Board selected a combined ‘associates team’ of these states, plus Bihar—which, along with Uttarakhand, is cruelly ignored too—that competed in east zone matches of the under-19 Vinoo Mankad Trophy. Ideally, if the BCCI had implemented the SC judgement, these six states, Uttarakhand and Bihar—which has been deprived of full-member status/Ranji Trophy participation for 13 years due to vote politics—should by now be preparing to compete in the 2017-18 dom­estic sea­­son. Of the eight deprived states, only Bihar has played Ranji Trophy, but only till 2003-04. Northeastern states and Uttarakhand have been completely ignored.

The next hearings in the apex court, which ordered wide-ranging reforms while dealing with a 2013 IPL spot-fixing case, are on July 24 and September 5. These are extremely crucial for the fut­ure of cricket in these states but might still not settle the question of their competing in national tournaments, which usually begin in early October, with fixtures finalised by July for logistical reasons. Now, the BCCI or the SC-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) must decide quickly and include these states in the fixtures, for the domestic season cannot be deferred due to indecisiveness or court hearings. The Board, therefore, may prepare multiple sets of fixtures to meet any orders that the court delivers. “There have to be at least three sets of fixtures: one, same as last year that excludes the Northeast states, Bihar and Uttarakhand; second, including Bihar but excluding the North­east and a third one, including all 29 states, including Northeast states and Bihar as well,” says a top BCCI official.

Frustrated at being shortchanged, the North-East Cricket Development Comm­ittee (NECDC), comprising the six states, is now mulling a stronger pitch after polite pleadings over the years. “We are now planning to file a petition/affidavit in the Supreme Court seeking justice. At the mom­ent, we are discussing this among ourselves, and we will meet in Delhi a couple of days before the July 26 BCCI special general body meeting and take a final decision,” says Naba Bhattacharjee, secretary of Meghalaya Cricket Associa­tion (MCA). “We’ll request that going by the SC ruling, and like the BCCI full members, the Northeast states should also be allowed to participate in the Ranji Trophy. We’ll also mention a request for granting monetary grants,” he adds.

Although they are still hoping of a posi­tive outcome at the SGM, convened to find ways to implement the court order, representatives from the North­east are clearly losing patience. A few of them even went to the extent of alleging “a kind of racism” by the BCCI. “I have felt that and I’ve conveyed this to my NECDC colleagues. One got a hint of that when a senior lawyer (representing BCCI acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary) demeaned Northeast sta­tes, particularly Nagaland, during the July 14 hearing in the SC,” Manipur Cricket Association secretary Singam Priyananda Singh tells Outlook. Some of Singh’s colleagues may not be as blunt, but they share his outrage at this unfairness. Even former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha, whose committee recommended the historic overhaul of the BCCI, now sounds disappointed. “It looks negative from all sides and all corners. The pressure that the court should have exerted and order passed has not happened. And I think CoA has failed in all their attempts (to implement the reforms). All their energy and time are being wasted in the controversy over the appointment of coach and support staff of the Indian team. It’s act­ually very frustrating,” Lodha tells Outlook.

Tado Kholi, founder-secretary of the Arunachal Cricket Association (ACA), is dejected too. “Someone told me about a probable rethink on the one state-one vote aspect, recommended by the Lodha Committee and accepted by the SC. So, that has made us very, very apprehensive, that we might lose this opportunity to join mainstream cricket. When the judgement came last year we were very happy that we would join the big teams. But things have been lingering, and the mood seems to be changing now,” he says. Kholi is, however, still hoping aga­inst hope that the Northeast teams get to compete at the 2017-18 Ranji Trophy.

One flimsy reason for not including the Northeast in Ranji is that no Northeast team can withstand competition from powerhouses like Mumbai. Bhattacharjee counters that head on. “Let them create a third group in the Ranji Trophy, besides the Elite and Plate Divisions, in which the Northeast teams can be placed and can compete against each other,” he suggests. Priyananda Singh points out that when India made its Test and ODI debut, it took years for it to establish itself in the international arena. “Without giving us a chance to play, how can anyone pre-judge whether our performance would be good or poor? Anyway, even big teams like Delhi and Tamil Nadu were shot out for less than 100 in the last season. Also, you know what India’s performance was in ODIs before winning the 1983 World Cup. Take Bangladesh’s example as well; they have improved a lot,” he cogently argues.

The fact is that Manipur is a national powerhouse in sports like football, hoc­key and boxing. But, in the region, it’s a cricketing power too. It won the BCCI Associate and Affiliate under-22 boys’ title in 2012 and was runners-up in under-16 and under-19 categories in 2014, besides its senior women finishing runners-up in 2010. If given more opportunities, Manipur has the potential to showcase its capability at the national level. The other reason that BCCI officials harp on to justify this exclusion is that they don’t have infrastructure to stage matches, or that stadiums can’t be built in the hilly terrain. But what they don’t admit is that they never encouraged them to build infrastructure or gave the same subsidy that the Board gives to its full members—Rs 60 crore. “When there are so many football stadiums (in the Northeast) why can’t cricket stadiums be constructed? These are bogies, not sound reasons,” says Lodha.

At present, Manipur, Sikkim and Bihar are BCCI’s associate members, or a rung below full members, while Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh are affiliates, or third rung members. Mizoram, along with Uttarakhand and Pondicherry, which has also been recommended to be embraced in the nat­ional mainstream, is the worst off. Mizoram was created in 1987 and the Cricket Association of Mizoram (CAM) in May 1992. Since then, several CAM officials, including its current secretary Mamon Majumdar, have made several representations seeking funds and opportunities to play. But the BCCI has turned a blind eye to them. “We are more concerned about the implementation of the Lodha Committee because the BCCI still hasn’t decided on one state-one vote recommendation. Why shouldn’t every state of the Indian Union be not recognised by the BCCI? We can play top-notch cricket only after it’s implemented, isn’t it?” Nagland Cricket Association secretary Abu Metha tells Outlook.

In all, only 21 of the 29 Indian states are full members of the BCCI. However, institutions like Railways, Services and All India Universities, Mumbai’s Cricket Club of India and Calcutta’s National Cricket Club have been granted full memberships (and votes), along with Mumbai, Saurashtra, Baroda and Vida­rbha. Bihar, the third most populous state, has suffered the worst—a victim of BCCI’s highly partisan, vote bank politics. When the state was bif­urcated and Jharkhand was created in Nove­mber 2000, the BCCI, in a shocking move, snatched Bihar’s full member status and handed it over to Jharkhand. Bihar has not been allowed to compete in the Ranji Trophy since 2004-05, when Jharkhand instead started competing. Ravi Shankar Prasad Singh, secretary of the currently recognised Bihar Cricket Association (it was granted associate membership in 2016), says his state is ready to play Ranji if given the opportunity. “We conducted tournaments with multiple-days matches recently, and shortlisted 40 boys from those. The BCCI should give us an opp­ortunity to play in the Ranji Trophy,” he demands.

Many people alleged that a few politicians at the highest level are the ones stalling reforms. But the onus is now on the Supreme Court to ensure that its orders are not flouted openly by a handful of “disruptive elements” in the BCCI. Otherwise, it will set an alarming precedent. Interestingly, Justice Dipak Mishra, who is heading the three-member bench hearing the BCCI case, will be taking over as Chief Justice of India from J.S. Khehar, who’s retiring on August 27, and will have more powers to see to it that the much-delayed—and desperately resisted—reforms are fin­ally executed. The cricket-loving public of the Northeast and Bihar cannot be disappointed one more time.