Letter of the Day

The sponsorship imbroglio

I have been one of those many Indian fans who wish that Indian cricket players would concentrate on their cricket rather than on marketing themselves. But I can't help but feel sympathetic to their plight as the current imbroglio with the ICC threatens our participation in the Champions Trophy. There are a number of issues that are coming to a head here, and they need to resolved quickly, amicably, and in ways that are in the players interests.

1. Nitty-gritty with respect to the ICC:

One can understand the ICC wanting to protect their sponsors' interests around big tournaments, but there are ways to do so and there are ways not to do so. True to form, the ICC has opted for the latter.

If these contracts are indeed so important, they need to have been circulated well in advance of the Champions Trophy, not at the last minute and in hurried fashion. Indeed, as the Indian players point out, the contracts have been circulated so late that just by signing the contracts the Indians could be said to be violating them (because of the one-month on either side of the Champions Trophy clause). The ICC has once again eroded its credibility (if it could be eroded any further) by failing to act in a sensible, organized manner, like any international governing body is expected to.

What really nauseated me however was Malcolm Speed's pious assertion that players should put country before cash. But of course, this controversy has nothing to do with country at all -- it is about ICC's cash versus players' cash. To project the ICC's corporate interests as synonymous with the players' national interests in both factually wrong, and cynical and manipulative in the extreme.

2. Nitty-gritty with respect to the BCCI

It would have been nice if the BCCI had at least taken the players' side on this matter. Simply voicing sympathy with the players' predicament is not taking sides. The players have quite clearly enunciated their reservations about the clauses, and many of those reservations have to do with ambiguities in the wording of the clauses that raise doubts about the _legal_ status of players' existing contracts with other sponsors. In other words, it's not just about money, but about wanting clear, specific and legally grounded clarifications on a number of ambivalent points in the contract.

It is the job of the ICC or the BCCI to provide these clarifications. Neither compensating players for money lost nor asking them to sign a provisional one month contract addresses any of these legal ambiguities. For Chandu Borde to ask the players to read the contract carefully so that it resolves itself is not very helpful. Clearly the players have read the contract carefully, and it hasn't resolved itself; and anyway, if the players are to put country before cash, as Malcolm Speed would like them to, then the BCCI should be ensuring that the contracts are properly explained to the players, so that the players can spend their time in the nets instead of reading contracts.

But there are two more troubling contradictions. The first has to do with the BCCI's "sympathetic" assurance that they will help players even if they find themselves in a litigious position. This implies that the BCCI agrees with the players that signing the ICC contract could put them in a litigious position with their existing sponsors. If that is the case, why are they not supporting the players interests to the ICC? Does the BCCI really want Indian cricketers spending time and energy in the courts, battling sponsorship issues? And is the BCCI willing to go beyond paternalistic assurances to actually, legally undertake to represent the players in court in case of litigation? Without this assurance, how on earth can the players agree to sign a contract that even the person who is asking them to sign is casting doubts on the legal validity of?

The second has to do with the annoyance shown by the BCCI to Ravi Shastri's intervention on behalf of the players. Clearly the BCCI is willing to be "sympathetic" to the players as long as their is no sign of the players being represented in any way -- viz. as long as the players are completely powerless to do the BCCI's bidding. The minute the players have a representative, even a de facto one, it seems like the BCCI's feathers are getting ruffled. Why is that? After all, Ravi Shastri is merely acting as a messenger, so the argument that his arrangement with WorldTel puts him in a position of conflict of interest is a completely specious one. Does the BCCI really want the players to spend all their energies arguing with the Board, when they have a Test match to play in two days time? Isn't it in fact in the interests of Indian cricket -- which BCCI claims, and has a duty, to represent -- that the players have someone talking on their behalf?

3. Larger questions:

It has become evident, both in football and in tennis, that governing bodies in sport have ceased to exist for the benefit of the players, and purely exist as corporate money-making machines. This was clearly voiced by Lleyton Hewitt recently, and is clearly seen in football World Cups that are constantly marred by injured and fatigued star players. The level of injuries, and the early retirements and "breaks" taken by leading cricketers, indicates that this malaise has very much reached cricket too. Players clearly are vulnerable here, since their opting out of tours, on account of injury or otherwise, opens the door for other aspiring players to take their places. Players interests desperately need to be represented, so that they play a sensible amount of cricket, and are adequately compensated for it. That all the major national captains echoed these sentiments, but were not even listened to by the ICC, shows the blatant disregard that the ICC has for the players. In these situations, it is vital that national boards represent their players interests, not as if they are performing some magnanimous gesture, but because players are equal negotiating parties whose interests and rights need to be respected. With both the ICC and the BCCI failing to take the players' interests into account, it is imperative that they unionize like players in other countries have done. Meanwhile, the decision to send a second-string team to Sri Lanka is completely unacceptable, and that it is being suggested by Board members that they are doing Sachin, Sourav, Dravid and Sehwag a favour by dropping them (and thereby not forcing them to sign their contracts) is cynical in the extreme. Effectively, the players are being prevented from playing, and plying their trade, illegitimately.

Malcolm Speed and Jagmohan Dalmiya should remember that spectators and sponsors pay to see the players, not the administrators. The game could go on very well (probably better) without its arrogant and ineffective bureaucrats. It couldn't without the best players to entertain and enthrall. The job of the governing bodies at all levels should be to ensure player welfare. Otherwise very soon they won't have any sponsors to protect from ambush marketing.

Kaushik Sunder Rajan