Why India's cricketers choose to stay silent unlike other athletes

The Justice Mudgal Committee report on IPL betting and fixing drew a frenzied reaction from the media and some reluctant comments from administrators. The players, as usual have stayed deathly silent. The recent revamp of the ICC that effectively gave control of the body to India, Australia and England drew sharp comments from FICA, international cricket’s player’s association. India’s players, of course, are not part of the association – the BCCI won’t allow it. [caption id=“attachment_1391677” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  To the BCCI’s credit, they take good care of their players. Reuters[/caption] Yet India’s cricketers have not always been this timid. In a piece in the Hindu Business Line, Vijay Lokpally reminds us that in the 1970s, Bishan Singh forced the BCCI to increase the Test match fee it paid for players. He also recalls the stand-off between six India players - Kapil Dev, Ravi Shastri, Mohammad Azharuddin, Kiran More, Ajay Sharma and Dilip Vengsarkar – and the board over a tour of the US to play exhibition matches in 1989. The BCCI decided to ban the players for a year but in the end had to back down and lift the ban after the players challenged the authority of the board to take such a decision. Lokpally also points out that players in other sports are no longer prepared to take shoddy treatment from India’s sports officials, who often don’t treat the players as a priority. India’s tennis players, led by Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna, recently formed a player’s union to take on the Indian tennis federation and Jwala Gutta made headlines for taking the Badminton Association to court when they tried to ban her for life because she dared to challenge their decisions. The courts, naturally, ruled in Gutta’s favour. Lokpally wonders why India’s cricketers have grown so silent. “The key factor that separates the cricketers from the rest today is the ‘please-don’t-quote-me’ syndrome,” he writes. Some of the most aggressive cricketers on the field are also the meekest off it. A hockey player or a tennis star would never be so timid.” The reason, though, is obvious. The BCCI takes good care of its players, unlike most of the other sports bodies. When cricketers have the best equipment, train with the best facilties and are paid better than 90 percent of the people in the country (forget other athletes), there is little to gain and everything to lose by being antagonistic. The BCCI recently handed out a pension to all its former cricketers. There is probably no other sports association in India that could even afford to do something like that, leave alone have the will to do it. There was an attempt in 2002 to form the Indian Cricket Players Association but it disappeared as soon as it appeared. The players tried back in 1989 too, but India Today reported it “ fizzled out for lack of support and fear of the BCCI victimising individuals.” India Today goes on to say that the involvement of Mohinder Amarnath and K. Srikkanth “is believed to have cost them the last few years of their careers”. Clearly, a player who takes on the board risks losing his entire livelihood. Ravindra Jadeja was banned from the IPL for a year for illegally negotiating with the Mumbai Indians but the BCCI let off the team with nothing but a warning. It was self evidently a case of different standards of justice for different parties, but no player raised a voice in protest. In 2012, Jadeja was bought by the Chennai Super Kings for $2 million. Expecting cricketers to jeopardise such large sums of money would be the sports equivalent of Waiting for Godot. Read the full Hindu Business Line piece here. Read the India Today story here.