Need for long-term team manager

The BCCI will not be short on quality personnel for the Indian team manager’s position.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president, Shashank Manohar, has promised to implement several reforms in a time frame of two months, with the aim of winning the confidence of cricket fans and other major stakeholders. 

The full members of the BCCI have placed faith in him and will look forward to the decisions he takes within his own powers and as directed by the working committee and annual general meeting. 

It’s also time for the BCCI to seriously consider appointing a long-term team manager just as Cricket Australia has done with Stephen Bernard, who was a first-class player and national selector before a 13-year stint with the national team as manager. 

The BCCI is using the services of former distinguished first-class cricketers such as M.V. Sridhar as General Manager, Cricket Operations & Tournament Director, 2016 ICC World Twenty20 and K.V.P. Rao as Manager, Game Development. Not long ago former India player Surendra Nayak was appointed Manager, Cricket Operations. 

The BCCI also engages former first-class cricketers as match referees. Former India captain Anil Kumble is chairman of its technical committee that’s filled with former cricketers and its national senior and junior selectors have either played for India or for States.

So the BCCI will not be short on quality personnel for the Indian team manager’s position. If it can have a coach, a team of assistant and specialist coaches and a team director on a long-term basis, the BCCI should come out of its apprehensive mindset and appoint a long-term team manager. 

The need to go for a path-breaking long-term team manager has been necessitated by the ICC’s decision to fine the India team manager Vinod Phadke 40 per cent of his fee after being “found making inappropriate comments” about umpire Vineet Kulkarni ahead of the Indore One-Day International. Phadke is perhaps the first Indian official to be docked by the ICC. 

The BCCI ought to have withdrawn Phadke’s accreditation as team manager. Phadke is the secretary of the Goa Cricket Association (GCA), and its website says he went to New Zealand in 2013 as a BCCI coordinator (Kerala’s T.C. Mathew was team manager).

The BCCI is known for nominating observers and coordinators for home international series and overseas tours. People familiar with manager / observer / coordinator appointments say: “They cannot distinguish between a John and Johnny and how do you expect them to read playing conditions and the ICC Code of Conduct. How will the cricketers respect such officials of the member units.”

The officials are paid $100 as daily allowance on tour and Rs. 5,000 per day in India.

Since 1992 several Indian cricketers have been penalised for breaching some rule or the other. Harbhajan Singh, S. Sreesanth and Ishant Sharma have been heavily fined or banned from playing after being found guilty of using foul language/gestures on the field.

The general perception among the cricket fraternity is that players will be careful under the guidance of a cricketer-manager or official who is well versed with rules and regulations.