Can Sourav Reform BCCI?

Expectations run high as Sourav Ganguly takes over as BCCI president. Indian fans will hope he can restore the cricket board to its pre-eminent status

- Boria Majumdar

Soon after taking over as US President, as Barack Obama stepped out to address his supporters gathered at Washington Park, a frisson of excitement rippled through the crowd. His words ‘yes, we can’ instantaneously offered the hope that things would soon get better. Indeed, the word that reverberated all over the United States and beyond was ‘Hope’. Something similar happened when Sourav Ganguly took over as India’s cricket captain in the year 2000. The game was in the throes of the match-fixing scandal, and disillusioned fans had moved on. Cricket in India was struggling for credibility. India needed a man of integrity and steel, to give fans the confidence that not all matches were fixed. The Australia series of 2001, with Sourav at the helm, rekindled that hope for Indian fans. The hope is that Sourav can do it once again in his second innings, this time as the country’s top cricket administrator. India is on a weak footing at the ICC, cricket’s apex international body; the country’s first-class cricket structure needs a revamp; the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) is tangled in hundreds of pending court cases; and, most importantly, Indian fans seem to have deserted Test cricket. The flavor of the time is the IPL, but unless international cricket has pride of place in the calendar and draws fans too, India’s standing as the leading cricket nation will take a beating.