Barely a day after Sahara India pulled the plug on Team India’s sponsorship, former Indian Premier League (IPL) chairman Lalit Modi has hit out at the present BCCI chairman N Srinivasan. Modi, in a long blog on his website, has criticised Srinivasan’s autocratic style of functioning and accused him causing financial loss to BCCI.
“Ego has a voracious appetite, the more you feed it, the hungrier it gets… Years of effort went into making the BCCI the most cash rich cricket body in the world. This helped us provide players with better infrastructure, coaches, facilities, team staff, stadiums and increased pay. A carefully made edifice is being shattered by one man – Narayanswamy Srinivasan who is unmindful of the consequences of his actions,” Modi wrote on his blog.
Reuters
While accusing Srinivasan of causing monetary loss to the board because of his ill thoughtout actions and mismanagement, Modi goes on to say, “The BCCI has also unfortunately allowed people –with vested interest – not connected with the game to come into the game, with the single agenda to control it.”
Hitting out at the BCCI and Srinivasan, Modi has alleged that some teams in the IPL are manipulating the game to their end and ensuring that the league goes the “EPL way”, by changing rules to their ends.
Modi wrote, “IPL was set up to ensure even playing field for all the teams. In that scenario rules can and should be made which benefits all or none. I have always maintained that the IPL should never go the EPL way and have a few top teams in the running for the title. That is against the very philosophy of the IPL. Only when every team has a chance of winning the title, does the league get exciting. But unfortunately now some team owners are trying to manipulate the league. This will hurt everyone. No team should become bigger than the league.”
He also laid the blame of the present BCCI-Sahara standoff on the BCCI and Srinivasan’s arbitrary nature of working.
“According to Sahara it felt that its genuine requests were not being addressed by the current BCCI regime, which maintained a high handedness in turning down its requests. This high handedness was evident in the way Srinivasan arrogantly handled concerns raised by Sahara Sri,” he wrote.
You can read the entire blog here.
