Not all doom and gloom in ad-hoc Rajasthan

On September 4, 27 days before the first Ranji Trophy match of the season, the BCCI had to constitute, for the second year running, an ad-hoc committee to make sure Rajasthan was represented in the premier domestic first-class tournament. The court approved the selectors in a week's time. No cricket of any meaning had been played in Rajasthan until then. The Sawai Mansingh Stadium had weeds growing in its stands. None of the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA) employees had been paid for eight months. During this period, one of the groundsmen lost his wife to illness. He did not have any money for the treatment.

This is Rajasthan, twice champions in the last five years, one of the eight IPL centres, and the home constituency of Lalit Modi in the BCCI. It is the last bit that is a problem. Modi, desperate to gain a foothold in the BCCI, cracked in through Rajasthan in 2005, staging nothing short of a coup to oust the Rungtas, who had been invincible till then. It needed help from friend and chief minister Vasundhara Raje to shift the goalposts, when a new Sports Act took away the voting rights from individuals. The secretaries of district associations now voted Modi into power.

Modi changed the face and soul of the RCA. With a chief minister happy to play ball, Modi transformed the state-owned Sawai Mansingh Stadium, and also brought up, in no time, the RCA Cricket Academy next to it. The nets here are still considered the best training facility in India. As there are everywhere in the BCCI, there are crazy Modi stories here too, of grandiosity and flamboyance, and of efficiency unheard of. Of how he made sure there was a 24/7 buffet on in the RCA offices so that those working here were not distracted looking for food, of the chartered planes that would wait for him at the airport as he would hop between matches in Mohali and Jaipur on the same day, of how decisions were immediate, of how ministers and bureaucrats were not allowed to throw their weight around and delay work in Rajasthan cricket.

It was of course too good to last. Once Raje lost her post, Modi did too. When Modi came back, the BCCI, now full of vendetta for a man who was once Moses, refused to recognise the association that voted him to power. Now the factions await the court's verdict. Workers here, who still admire the work Modi got done, are of the view that if Modi withdraws from the RCA, they can all get back to their feet. Modi, though, has no such plans to give up his last foothold in the BCCI.

The situation is best summed by an RCA employee's quoting of the famous line from Bollywood movie Saudagar, said of the scheming villain of the piece: "Banaye bhi Chuniya, bigade bhi Chuniya, bada harami hai yeh Chuniya." [It is Chuniya who makes it, and it is Chuniya who breaks it, what a bastard this Chuniya is."]

So there we were, 20 days to the first match of the season, when the Rajasthan players gathered at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium, just across the road from the Rajasthan High Court, and pleaded to those in power not to ruin their year ahead. The task for the ad-hoc committee was unenviable. The Colvin Shield, the inter-district tournament, hadn't been played. No other formal cricket had been played. How do you begin selecting teams?

It is the fourth round of the Ranji Trophy. Rajasthan are to host Maharshtra. They have already played one match at home. This is the third Ranji Trophy match this correspondent is at this season. Enter the Sawai Mansingh Stadium and walk along the circumference, and there is a sense for the first time that a Ranji Trophy match is expected here. There are signboards of "Team Rajasthan" all over the ground. Both the teams are practising at the same time at the RCA academy. There is clear demarcation for the teams. Umbrellas, chairs, water, ice: everything is in place. There is a standee of Team Rajasthan to do interviews in front of. All the players are happy with the training facility.

Amrit Mathur, who has been an India team manager in the past, is the co-ordinator of the ad-hoc committee. He is the signing authority. He is the only one from the committee present here. He is talking to Pritam Gandhe, the chairman of the junior selection committee. Gandhe is a former Vidarbha player and is a national junior selector. Mathur is asking him to look at a few of the youngsters once again. Mathur has been receiving calls from local coaches saying that some deserving kids have been left out.

It is understandable that some complaints will be there. These selection committees had nothing but last year's performances to go by. But what do you do with Under-14 teams? They had no cricket last year. So, they did the best they could. They called for open trials for the Under-14s. Nine hundred kids plus parents turned up.

Sitting space and refreshments were arranged for the parents. Sixty groups of 15 each would be sent into the nets. Kids were identified by numbers assigned to them to avoid foul play. Admittedly this is not the ideal way, but that was the only way for them. The number was brought down to 100 after the first screening, which came down to 60 after medical tests.

These 60 were then split into teams of 15 each, and matches organised simultaneously to pick the best 15. They had some records for the seniors, so the Ranji selections started with a pool of 60 players. Matches, balls, scorers, umpires, outfields, government clearances: everything had to be done and was done. Medical tests, practice kits, match kits, coaching staff, support staff, accounting, were pulled out of thin air. Most of the coaching staff, though, was retained from last year to ensure some continuity.

There are quibbles, there will be quibbles throughout, but you can see this committee is doing the best it can in the time it has available. It helps that Mathur has prior experience of cricket administration in his role as a consultant with Delhi Daredevils. It also helps that Mathur is originally from Jaipur, and knows people here. He says it helps the most that the infrastructure is in place already. That he doesn't have to go looking for space for nets, that a residential block is built right next to the nets. They have taken one of the rooms there, and converted it into their office.

When Rajasthan hosted the first match, an invite was sent to all the former Ranji cricketers living in Jaipur. They managed to trace 64 of them. Fifty turned up. Eighty-three-year-old Kishan Rungta, also a former national selector, was the oldest among them. A separate enclosure was built for them. They appreciated the gesture. One of Jagmohan Dalmiya's last acts as BCCI president was to constitute this committee. There was a two minutes' silence observed for him.

The mind went back to Rajkot two weeks earlier. A Jharkhand player got injured and needed to apply ice where he had been hit. It took the hosts, Saurashtra, half an hour to provide ice. The next day, the Jharkhand manager could be heard complaining loudly to the organisers, "How long does it take to get some water here? It has been half an hour. Boys are playing out in the sun, can we get some drinking water?" The 17-year-old Ishan Kishan was batting in his 80s when he asked his team-mates sitting on the sidelines for his score. The big scoreboard told only the team score. And the players on the sidelines couldn't get hold of the scorer.

The lone journalist who turned up didn't get access to the scorer either. There was no power point to charge the laptop, leave alone water, tea or food, which can be done without. The spectators - and they turn out for Ravindra Jadeja and Cheteshwar Pujara - are at the bottom of this chain. No shade, no toilet, no drinking water.

In Delhi, Mohammad Azharuddin had been invited and was seen talking to players when the match was on. Their administrators didn't have a clue what exactly constituted the players' and match officials' area (PMOA). Similar confusion reigned in Rajkot where reporters couldn't sit with the scorer under instructions from the anti-corruption officer. How were they to get the scores? Why, of course, you can call her, they were told. In fact, the scorers are not supposed to take calls during games.

The Delhi players have not been paid match fees for two years because DDCA can't be bothered enough to put its house in order, to get the yearly grant, or at least compile a list of players who have played for them so the BCCI can share its profits with them. Rajasthan, on paper in much worse health, don't have such problems. And these are associations in the spotlight. The less you talk of the remote outposts the better. These associations get close to Rs 30 crore each and some of them can't arrange for proper nets.

The players who visit a cricket venue want good nets, good dressing rooms and good playing conditions. Rajasthan has managed to provide all three. Everything else is secondary. Makes you wonder why all these other state associations, where power hardly changes hands, where people get elected unopposed for ages, can't organise Ranji matches properly.

The answer is simple. This committee doesn't have a kingdom to build, no voters to please, no influential fathers to appease through selection, no money to save. It is the BCCI's money, and it is being spent on cricket. And the officials who know how much it used to cost to organise Ranji matches say it is costing less this year in Jaipur. "Cricket administration is very easy actually," Mathur says.

It is not as if the problems have miraculously disappeared. Cricket administration is a year-round job. It cannot be done in one month. Players at lower levels are obviously demoralised. The staff is disheartened. The batsmen are still collapsing at least once every match. There used to be cricket all year round in Rajasthan; now there is only BCCI-organised cricket. For teams to be selected fairly, for talent to be identified all over the state, a committee with a longer time span might be needed. It is possible that if the impasse in Rajasthan cricket continues, the same committee might be asked to run districts cricket too.

The fear of an outside authority running cricket is making the BCCI fall in line. The court is this close to taking it all away from the people who run the BCCI, which is trying its best to retain control. Suddenly conflict of interest is being addressed; suddenly transparency has become important. How the board could do with some co-operation and clean administration from its vote banks, the state units.