For Indian cricket, 2018 was undoubtedly a year of immensely memorable victories and on-field performances. However, it was also coloured by rancour, alleged misdemeanours, and bitter fights among the Supreme Court appointed administrators (CoA). The year should have been one of celebration—the first batch of women umpires had started officiating. Instead, it was overshadowed by bickering, infighting, politics and more.
Even as the state associations and the cricket board dragged its feet for most of the year when it came to the implementation of the Lodha commission recommendations, defiant old guards in the states continued to make most of the situation. But, for once, it was not their actions that hogged the headlines. BCCI CEO Rahul Johri, Vinod Rai and Diana Edulji became the star attractions, all for the wrong reasons.
Indian cricket administration hit the lowest point when allegations of sexual harassment were levelled against Johri. The enquiry commission thereafter gave him a clean chit, which was accepted by Vinod Rai, one of the members of the CoA, by not by Diana Edulji, another member. The differences between them came out in the open, and since then, the matter took a turn for the worse. Johri was given a clean chit, but the process of enquiry raised more questions than answers.
Kohli the batsman's legend continued to grow as he stood the tallest among his teammates, leading from the front with his bat—scoring centuries in Johannesburg, Birmingham, Nottingham, and Perth. Till the Melbourne Test in Australia, he had amassed 1,322 runs in 13 Tests in 2018, at an average of 55.08. However, while the world raised a toast to one of the finest exponents of batsmanship in modern times, his decisions as captain—especially the choice of playing eleven in the away series—were put under the microscope. Coach Ravi Shastri, as well as national selectors, did not escape the disapproval expressed by past cricketers. The dropping of Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane and Bhuvneshwar Kumar in South Africa, injured spinner Ravichandran Ashwin's selection to the playing eleven in the Oval Test match, or the absence of a full-time spinner from the playing eleven in Perth were just some of the examples that garnered ire.
While the men's team performances have always been a subject of intense scrutiny, for the women's team, it was a first-time experience. They had paved their way into the collective conscience of the country, in 2017, by surging into the finals of the ICC Cricket World Cup. In 2018, their performances were keenly followed and discussed. In the ICC Twenty20 World Cup in West Indies, they reached the semi-finals. That women's cricket was a serious business for BCCI became evident, but not for all the right reasons.
India's finest batter Mithali Raj's exclusion from the playing eleven in two matches became a bigger issue than anyone would have thought. Her email accusing coach Ramesh Powar of bias, and the differences between her and T20 skipper Harmanpreet Kaur, was leaked. It snowballed to such an extent that it caused bitter differences within the CoA, and led to the end of a three month tenure of Powar as coach. Further differences between Raj and her teammates came to light when T20 skipper Kaur and her deputy Smriti Mandhana urged the board to retain Powar as coach.
With the mess becoming worse in the women's team, it was decided that they would go for a new coach for the ladies. The appointment became another bone of contention between Rai and Edulji, with the latter insisting that only the Cricket Advisory Committee was entitled as per the new constitution to select a coach. But Rai, after consulting lawyers, decided to appoint an ad hoc committee to do so. What did come out clearly was the fact that Rai, as chairman of CoA, had decided to go ahead with certain decisions, brushing aside his colleague Edulji's angst. CAC's existence remains a question mark.
Former India opener W.V. Raman was selected over former India coach Gary Kirsten to be the new women's coach, but it remains to be seen how he can get bickering star players to come together as a team.
2019 will dawn with the desperate hope of SC's new two-judge bench approving compliances thus far, and giving a green signal to the CoA to hold elections to the BCCI. A squabbling, headless, rich cricket board is now affecting the on-field performances, with players getting caught in the crossfire, and officials and employees working in an uncertain environment.
