The
[ Board of Control for Cricket in India ]
(BCCI) had a working committee meeting on Sunday.
The headlines will doubtlessly be about the report into high-level corruption in the
[ Indian Premier League ]
.
Submitted after a probe by two retired High Court judges, it appears to exonerate Gurunath Meiyappan, one-time team principal of the
[ Chennai Super Kings ]
and son-in-law of N Srinivasan, the board president who stepped aside to facilitate the investigation.
It is also supposed to give a clean chit to Raj Kundra, one of the owners of the
[ Rajasthan Royals ]
.
It will be interesting to see how the Mumbai and Delhi Police, who questioned both individuals for days, respond to this latest development.
Of far greater long-term importance to Indian cricket, however, is an issue that remained unresolved at the meeting - the itinerary for the tours of
[ South Africa ]
and
[ New Zealand ]
in 2013/14.
Cricket South Africa released one a few weeks ago, only for the BCCI to say that it did not have their approval, since they had not been consulted.
The present tug of war with the South African board - traditionally an Indian ally - appears to have a lot less to do with schedules and more to do with its appointment of Haroon Lorgat as chief executive.
As long ago as last February, Cricket South Africa had apparently been "warned" about the consequences of choosing Lorgat, whose time as chief executive of the International Cricket Council did not endear him to Indian officials.
Unlike other pliable men, Lorgat had shown some spine when it came to the bigger issues affecting the game.
He was a proponent of the Decision Review System, and favoured the implementation of the Woolf Report that recommended far-reaching changes to the way the game is administered.
He was also not shy to criticise the blatant self-interest of the bigger, richer boards.
The itinerary that Cricket South Africa drew up did seem unnecessarily long and bloated.
Seven-match one-day international series are an abomination that we can well do without, and there was an eight-day gap between the second and third Tests that also raised a few eyebrows.
Part of the problem was an Indian schedule that looks like a two-year-old Lego tower.
Immediately after South Africa, India have to be in New Zealand for Tests, ODIs and Twenty20s.
The Asia Cup - a tournament likely to be remembered only for having featured Sachin Tendulkar's last ODI game - comes next, followed by the World Twenty20 in Bangladesh.
After that, the players go straight into a two-month-long IPL.
If they survive that, it is on to a five-Test series in England next July.
The BCCI is apparently contemplating cutting one of the South Africa Tests.
Whether for reasons of spite or scheduling, that would be a terrible disservice to a group of young batsmen who would benefit immeasurably from three Tests against the world's best pace attack in its own backyard.
In 1999/2000, India were thrashed 3-0 in Australia, with everyone other than Tendulkar made aware of how much they had to improve to compete at the highest level.
In many ways, that series was the making of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman. They lost badly, but did not forget the lessons learnt.
With the Asia Cup unlikely to be sacrificed, the sensible thing would be to reschedule the New Zealand Tests for another year and play just the limited-overs games there.
Common sense, though, is not always what drives the BCCI.
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