Ending the reign of Ministers and bureaucrats in the apex cricketing body — Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) — a committee headed by former Supreme Court Chief Justice RM lodha on Monday made public their report submitted to the Supreme Court preparing the blueprint to reform BCCI.
The over 150-page exhaustive report compiled by SC-constituted three-member panel of Justice lodha, former SC judges RV Raveendran and Ashok Bhan even ended the dominance of city-based cricket associations and proposed that only one association per State will be permitted to be a full-time member of BCCI.
The panel’s report also touched on the controversial issue of betting proposing to legalise betting in cricket matches but with certain safeguards. It suggested that except for players and officials, people should be allowed to place bets on registered websites.
At present the BCCI has 34 members, some of which do not represent any region like Services, Railways, etc, and nor do they play tournaments. Some States such as Maharashtra and Gujarat have three cricket associations each.
The panel even proposed a cap fixing age limit (not above 70) and maximum tenure of nine years for an office- bearer to hold any post in BCCI. No office-bearer in State cricket association will be eligible to hold any post in BCCI simultaneously.
Giving players their due, the panel recommended replacing the 14-member Working Committee with a nine-member Apex Council that will have two representatives of Players Association (a man and woman player), a nominee from the Comptroller and Auditor General office, besides elected office bearers of BCCI.