Speak up: An open letter to the BCCI

N Srinivasan

To whomsoever it may concern. To the bunch of cricket enthusiasts running cricket in this country who it ought to concern.

Everyone in India is a selector, everyone in India is an analyst, and everyone in India is a critic. A billion people have a billion opinions, and you cannot incorporate all of them which we completely understand.

Please do understand that everything in India revolves around cricket. The entire high definition television viewing experience that exists today has come up only for the cricket audience. All offers on holiday trips, electronics, food items and practically everything worth selling are invariably match tickets or a chance to spend an evening with a cricketer or an autographed goodie.

You have the money, you have the power and you have the players, there isn’t much left for you to gain. But there is certainly an awful lot you can give in terms of answers for nothing hurts us more than allegations against our players which are neither proved nor refuted. The Indian captain is accused of making false statements to the Mudgal Commission, the Board President refuses to step down despite being asked to by the Supreme Court of India and amidst this mess all we get to hear from your officials is “cricket will overcome this problem too” and “the matter is sub-judice.”

Agreed that the Indian captain doesn’t need to respond to these allegations in the middle of the World cup, but the same happened during last year’s Champion’s Trophy, when all the mess surrounding the IPL was forgotten after the trophy came home. This World Cup promises to be no different.

It is the highest body of justice in this country has put some serious allegations on you and not some angry jealous former cricketer venting his anger against you on twitter because he wasn’t born in the era of the IPL. Something is certainly rotten in the BCCI and it is impossible to ignore.

We belong to the category of a billion voices who follow the Indian cricket team to England, Australia South Africa and New Zealand and even after they fail to win a single game we are certainly going to be amongst one of the loudest contingents during the World Cup. We wait outside ticket counters to open for hours, get lathi charged by the cops only to be told that all the tickets and have been sold out. We do not demand victories, we do not demand centuries or five wicket hauls.

We do not demand an extensive press conference for every charge that comes up. All we demand is an acknowledgment, an acknowledgment of our existence. There is no way on earth that we are going to stand outside and wait for wait for decades for the court to pass its judgement which will inevitably clear all of you of the charges against you due to the lack of evidence as has been happening forever.

Please speak up, tell us what we ought to know. The board isn’t made up of one father in law of a cricket enthusiast. It has thirty state and associate members under it. Yes, this is a very cosy club, but surely one of them will have the courtesy to speak up, to care for the game which we all love to death and cannot bear to see it go to the dogs just to quench one man’s desire to control the game. Speak up, we aren’t going to be waiting around too long.

Sincerely,

An Indian cricket fan