A conditional reprieve

The highest court in the land has ruled, and it must bring a smile to those in high office in the Board of Control for Cricket in India. In a way, it's a relief to the cricket community as a whole. The state has no business to run sports, and for all its sins, we wouldn't wish the BCCI to be an organ of the government. That would be a case of bad getting worse.

But there is little reason for the BCCI to be smug. Instead, the Supreme Court ruling, delivered while dispensing a petition from Zee Telefilms challenging the cancellation of its bid for telecast rights to Indian cricket, should serve as a warning. The BCCI came within one vote of losing its autonomy. That two of five judges on the bench thought otherwise should be chilling enough. At best, it is a conditional reprieve, and not a carte blanche for ad hoc-ism. And in any case, the matter of telecast rights is far from over: Zee have been allowed to take their case to the Bombay High Court, and it will be astounding if they don't.

The BCCI's conduct in the telecast rights issue has bordered on the abominable. By delaying the decision and by playing one television channel against the other, they had hoped to extract the maximum, but it was a game of brinksmanship doomed to spiral out of control. The BCCI played no mean part in souring the process, and it would have been naïve on its part to expect the loser to shake hands and walk away gracefully. The Board was well within its rights to invalidate Zee's tenders, but it could have done so at the first stage citing ineligibility - but by stringing them along to drive the bids higher, the board worked itself into a bind from where litigation was the only way ahead.

To interpret the Supreme Court judgment as favourable to the BCCI would be a fallacy. The court has considered the broader issue of governance of sporting bodies while upholding the BCCI's autonomous status. The BCCI was not created by a statute, no part of its shareholding is held by the government, and the government does not extend any direct financial assistance to it. While the BCCI enjoys a monopoly in the field of cricket, such status was not state-conferred. Further, the BCCI could not be considered a "state" in isolation; the same fate would then befall all the 64 sports associations which run various sports in the country. Also, declaring a sporting body a state would mean each of its functions, including the selection of players, could be challenged in court.

But autonomy cannot exist without accountability. The BCCI must be held accountable to its primary stakeholders: the players and the cricket-watching public. Both can claim to have been short-changed by the mishandling of the television-rights issue. Zee's Rs14,000million bid for the rights was based, to a significant extent, on the two high-profile series this season. Australia have come and gone, and it is unlikely that the matter will be resolved in time before the Pakistan series. The BCCI is yet to reveal how much it earned from the state-owned Prasar Bharati, which telecast the last two series against Australia and South Africa and is likely to do so for the Pakistan matches as well. Prasar Bharati held the rights from 1999 to 2004 for Rs2030million, and had bid Rs7000million for the rights over the next four years.

It is inconceivable that they would have paid the BCCI an amount proportionate to the bids made by either Zee or ESPN-Star. The loss is not the BCCI's alone. The players, under the contracts finalised last year, were due to receive 27% of the total earnings of the board, and they have a right to be unhappy about the impasse. As for the cricket-watching public, they were perhaps lucky to be spared the dancing girls and other inanities by having the state-run channel broadcast the Australian series, but they lost out on something more vital: the first ball of a fresh over often being bowled before Doordarshan took a break from commercials to focus on cricket.

A BCCI office-bearer was recently quoted as saying that deadlines were hardly a worry for the board. "As long as we make good money everything will be fine," he said. How much? How? At what cost?