After the humiliating World Cup 2007, BCCI has taken stringent measures against the players. Some of the top most decisions, with immediate effect, included: doing away with players’ contract system, an endorsement cap of not more than three endorsements per player, a sponsor cannot endorse more than two players from the team.

Rahul Dravid, after attending the two-day BCCI emergency meeting on 6-7 April, did not speak to the media, however, he informed some media men back in Bangalore that there was no conflict between the players and the BCCI, and only talks between them could resolve the latest issues concerning endorsement cap and contract system.

On the heels of these updates, Kris Srikkanth, former Indian team captain has made a revelation that he kept a secret for 18 years. The BCCI had then (in 1989) offered him a divide-and-rule deal in return for its backing. He told, it was on the eve of the Pakistan tour in 1989. For long, the issue of graded payments had been uneasily hanging in the air. Senior cricketers were serious upon getting it implemented much like the present scenario when the senior players (Rahul Dravid, in particular, being the captain) and the BCCI appeared ranged on separate sides of a monetary divide. BCCI, having decided in the emergency meeting that the team to Bangladesh next month, will have a lot of young players, may give us a sense of deja vu.

Raj Singh Dungarpur, the then Chairman of Selectors, called the flashing batsman to his room in a hotel they were putting in, and offered a brand-new team (a second XI of sorts), provided that he abandoned his senior colleagues.

Srikkanth refused the BCCI offer and he went ahead and toured Pakistan with the regular players after announcing that they would forfeit the tour fees, under protest. The captain did not have a good series as a player, but team India played remarkably well to draw the series. It was unprecedented that the team had not lost a series to Pakistan on its soil.

Srikkanth, on return to India, was packing his bags for the next tour to New Zealand in a week’s time, when the news came that not only he was stripped of the captaincy but also dropped from the team. That turned out to be the end of the career of a fierce attacker of cricketing ball.

Given the chaotic events of the past few days in Indian cricket, Srikkanth very aptly puts it, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

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