At The Mainland's Stolid Defence

Cruelly barred from joining cricket’s mainstream for long, Northeastern states have decided on a final fling of the ball

- Qaiser Mohammad Ali

A change of times worthy of a Dylanesque bard is afoot in Ind­ian cricket administration, but the speed of reforms in the Board of Control for Cricket in India is agonisingly slow. The Supreme Court­ordered reforms, which entail an overhaul of the Board’s governance structure, have not been implemented for over a year­and­a­ half since the historic judgement. Gra­ndees with vested interests in the BCCI have adopted a dilatory tactic vis-­a-­vis implementating the Lodha Committee recommendations. Stuck in the morass are hopes of smaller cricket­playing states in the Northeast for an equal share of the pie, a level playing field.

Those states haven’t lost hope. One radical Lodha recommendation was to grant full membership to all 29 states. At the moment, six Northeast states, barring full-member states Tripura and Assam, have either ‘associate’ or ‘affiliate’ member status. Unfortunately, Mizoram doesn’t figure in the BCCI’s scheme of things; it has not even been granted the bottom-most ‘affiliate’ membership.

Utterly frustrated after pleading with the BCCI over the years, cricket associations of the six states—Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur, and Sikkim—have now decided to play their final card: to take the legal route to get their rightful due— full memberships, which will entitle them to regular funds. It also means the right to compete in all BCCI-organised tournaments. Towards that end, the six states will soon file a joint affidavit in the Supreme Court, with a plea to include their teams in all BCCI tournaments in the 2017-18 season, starting October 6, including the Ranji Trophy.