Diana Edulji said that the one-upmanship between the CoA and BCCI office-bearers is unnecessary.
Diana Edulji, CoA member, spoke to The Indian Express about their unexpectedly lengthy stint at the helm of the BCCI and their lengthy tug-of-war with the office-bearers. Excerpts.
Did you think that you’ll be around for so long trying to get things in order?
I don’t want to criticize the Supreme Court but that’s where we have got stuck. If we get the green signal from there, then we can move quickly. We want the implementation to happen quickly. What’s happened is that the Supreme Court is very busy with bigger issues. We gave our first constitution order in October and if that hearing would have taken place, we would have finished by now. The Amicus was told and met him and the constitution was looked at again. Now this is final. The apex court says July 5, hopefully, we will go ahead and start implementing. We don’t need an SGM and all.
Do you see this unending one-upmanship between the CoA and the BCCI office-bearers being sorted out ever?
It is a bit unnecessary. We don’t want to function without them. But their term is over and we had to bring it to the notice of the SC. That created a problem. They go to Afghanistan and make a statement that they can come and play a friendly here. What happens to India A and Board President’s XI? In Bhutan, they’ve made a statement that they can come and train at the NCA. It’s already over-burdened. We want to be careful with the statements that get made. Going to ICC and talking about Champions Trophy to be turned into a World T20, we are not aware. At least, let us know. We shouldn’t be caught off guard. People will attack us and say because CoA is weak, ICC is taking advantage. That is the reason the friction is happening.
Then there was the confusion over the day-night Test.
It was just the way the decision was taken. We made it very clear to the office-bearers that they take a mandate and stick to that. They go to South Africa and spoke to Ravi (Shastri). Ravi must have said something and then you just sent an email saying we are playing a day-night Test in a Tier II city and all that. That’s where we put our foot down. When we had our talk with Ravi, he said ‘No, we are not ready yet’. There was the confusion. Then we had to get a mail from Ravi. And we had to say that they need another 15 months. Australia was pressing for the Adelaide Test but the players weren’t ready. We need them to get used to it. It’s not like we are never going to play day-night Tests.
What do you say about the talk of the CoA having overreached their mandate?
We had to get into the management part because there was nothing moving from their side. We are not hampering their work but they are not having their meetings. The number of times we have asked them to have their sub-committee meetings. The NCA hasn’t met, and we had to get involved and help clear the dues for the ground there, which was just lying there.