Live Score
Cricket Teams
Cricket Players
Now, a peace march
“Get well soon DDCA” read a placard hung outside the Ferozeshah Kotla Stadium’s boundary wall.
“Get well soon DDCA” read a placard hung outside the Ferozeshah Kotla Stadium’s boundary wall.
The ‘pitch fiasco’ followed by a stormy AGM, the blame-game and mudslinging included — all pointers to the fact that all is not well within the Delhi & Districts Cricket Association.
On Wednesday, former India cricketers Kirti Azad, Madan Lal, Vivek Razdan, Robin Singh Junior, among others, held a peace march outside the stadium to appeal against the corrupt practices of the DDCA’s sports committee.
They led a bunch of cricketers, mostly teenagers from local clubs, to add volume to their voice. Holding banners, posters, candles and wearing black head and armbands, the procession garlanded the stadium’s gate and lit candles near it praying for its “speedy recovery”.
Kirti Azad was highly critical of the DDCA’s administrative practices. “It’s high time cricketers have a say in its functioning,” he said.
“There are as many as 24 members in the sports committee but none of them have any knowledge about
cricket.”
He refused to acknowledge Chetan Chauhan as a cricketer and said: “I don’t have any personal grudge against him (Chauhan), but I was shocked when my query regarding DDCA’s financial practices was dismissed my him. I was told not to get into it.”
Blaming the practice of ‘proxy voting’ he said, “As long as the proxy system is present within the administrative set-up, nothing can be done.”
“Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, if he comes down here, won’t be able to improve things as there are proxies running the system.”
“Why is it that every time it has to be the DDCA which hogs the limelight for all the wrong reasons, why not any other association?” He asked and went on to answer his own question, saying: “That is because in every other association a cricketer is in-charge of the selection and other such matters. It is only here that a person who has no knowledge about the game has a say in it.”
Former India medium-pacer Madan Lal was more guarded. “Our fight is not against any individual or a group. We just want cricketers to benefit.”
Azad’s solution was not particularly original: “take away the powers of the sports committee,” he said.
