Union Sports Ministry should make it clear if it was India as a nation which won the glorious World Cricket Cup in 1983 under captaincy of Kapil Dev with Kirti Azad also a member of the winning team, or it was a team hosted by a private cricket club namely Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) which won the said World Cricket Cup.
Issue gains importance with BCCI having adopted biased attitude in denying cash honorarium out of BCCI affiliated IPL earnings to World Cricket Cup heroes like Kapil Dev and Kirti Azad only because these great cricketers have refused to dance to tunes of some individuals at BCCI taking it as their private property. BCCI should not be allowed to call its sponsored cricket team as Indian Cricket Team till it accepts to be a public-authrity for transparency and accountability under RTI Act.
Prime Minister and Union Cabinet Secretariat should make it clear how and why Union ministers like Sharad Pawar and Rajiv Shukla could attend cabinet-meetings rejecting Union Sports Ministry’s drafted Sports Bill when these ministers had a definite conflict of interest with themselves being actively involved in BCCI, IPL and cricket-politics. Significantly the said Sports Bill would have clipped wings of BCCI in its dictatorial and biased attitude in managing cricket-affairs for the country.
– Subhash Chandra Agrawal