by Raja Baradwaj Rajagopalan
While tracking the assembly election results on one of the leading Indian news channels I chanced this ticker. It read “BCCI unhappy with Ishant for endorsing an unauthorized 10-over gully cricket”. The million dollar question cropped in my mind (again) “Where is Indian cricket (establishment) heading?”
If this news is true, then it means that BCCI is the sole proprietor of cricket in India. That is at least what the cricket establishment in India thinks.
Assuming the Indian population today stands at 1.1 billion, let’s do some math (it is all guesstimates, please don’t take this for the exact numbers).
Let’s assume an average of 3,000 people make a street. This means that India would roughly have somewhere close to 400,000 streets or gullies.
Now let us assume 70% of the Indians play / patronize cricket. This means cricket would be played in roughly 280,000 of the Indian streets. To expect these many streets to approach the BCCI for permission to play cricket or conduct inter-street tournaments would be quixotic to put it very subtly.
That said, it is quite common across India to invite a famous son of the soil or street to inaugurate (or endorse) any venture that gets off, from a grocery to a cricket training camp. We wouldn’t have forgotten a couple who missed training between two matches during the recent England ODIs to inaugurate a cricket academy run by one of the first families of BCCI.
The BCCI tend to forget the fact that Ishant is Ishant today because he grew up playing gully cricket, the form of cricket that BCCI claims as unauthorized.
(He would not be wearing fancy suits as in the pic above or even signing autographs for his young, impressionable Indian fans.)
It would have been that he played gully cricket so well to be spotted by a coach, a well wisher or a physical education teacher of his school. He then would have started playing age group cricket which would have been where affiliation or authorization would have come into play for the first time in his life (continuing to play gully cricket in the sidelines). To sum up, the first 2-3 years of his cricketing life would have been spent playing (what they call) unauthorized cricket.
This wouldn’t be just the case of Ishant. Starting from Col. Naidu* (and even well before him), every cricketer who represented the Indian team till date would have started playing his cricket that way. So what is the message that BCCI wants to send by censuring Ishant for endorsing a gully cricket tournament?
Do they want to say,
1. Gully cricket is outlawed in India and anyone playing gully cricket anymore is ineligible to play any BCCI authorized cricket?
2. Or that any street that has kids / people playing cricket should apply to BCCI for affiliation?
If (1) is the answer, then the complete current crop would have to be disqualified. For every one of them would have played or would be playing some form of a gully cricket.
If (2) is the answer, then there are a couple of things one could gather
1. BCCI is looking at recognizing each one of the 280,000 gullies that play cricket now. This again would bring us to another interesting crossroad. How would BCCI identify the legitimacy of the person who applies for affiliation on behalf of a street? In the world where the likes of Rungta’s and Modi’s are fighting court battles to prove their legitimacy to run the operations of state cricket boards, one is confused how BCCI would go about recognizing these many thousand street bodies.
2. A much simpler solution. Nobody can play (unauthorized) cricket in the streets of India. The BCCI would build parks / stadiums / facilities where the people who want to play should go register themselves first and get tokens. Based on the token number each team would be called to play cricket on a fixed day. That would be the only way the Indian public could play the game (the authorized way).
Option 2b seems an interesting option. This could prove another interesting stream of revenue for the cash strapped (!!) BCCI. The revenues on token / ticket sales, probably a brand could print its message on the flip side of the ticket, branding on all corners of the facility / place where cricket is played, sale of snacks and all the other stuff one could imagine.
May be, one should check the patent offices around the world, BCCI might have applied for a patent for “Cricket”, the game by now.
* Col. Naidu might not have played gully cricket (in precise terms). He might instead have played regimental or company cricket while serving the Indian army.
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