Bishan Singh Bedi: "BCCI is crawling for credibility"

Ravi Sawant

BCCI is the apex governing body of all cricket in India. Despite being surrounded by a lot of controversies of late, the BCCI vice-president, Ravi Sawant, believes that there was “no erosion of the Board’s credibility”.

BCCI has adopted a careful approach with regard to the Supreme Court’s decision of the Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee to investigate into the matters of corruption in IPL.

“The Supreme Court has clearly said it doesn’t want to interfere with the autonomy of the BCCI. We were asked to appoint a probe panel and we did. If the Supreme Court feels someone else should conduct the probe, do we have a choice? We are going by their directions,” Sawant said, in a chat with a leading newspaper.

Sawant also praised players like Ravi Shastri whose name had been suggested for the panel to probe, “People like Shastri and (Sunil) Gavaskar are legendary cricketers.”

It looks like people’s faith in the BCCI is declining due to the apparent corruption. On this, a former BCCI official said that, “I feel sorry for the cricketers and the fans of the game. The decisions have to be made by the officials concerned. But, whatever is happening is very unfortunate, and it’s certainly hurting the game.”

Some other officials refused to comment in the media on this issue.

Former Indian captain Bishan Singh Bedi, however raised a few eyebrows with his remark, “The BCCI is crawling for credibility. Any layman can point this out. I endorse what Ajit Wadekar said. ‘Everybody is trying to save their administrative face — their ugly administrative face, rather’. Nobody is bothered about the game. Why did they allow matters to reach this stage? This should have been nipped in the bud.”