Should BCCI's conflict of Interest rules only work as basic parameters?

The conflict of interest in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the main reason behind Justice (retd) RM Lodha Committee's administrative reforms coming into existence. Former BCCI president N Srinivasan’s conflict created plenty of negative energy within the BCCI, which led to his ouster from the cricket body. Since then, the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) got into governance and re-arranged the definition of conflict – the bane of all cricket controversy.

Later, it was meant to be carried forward by the new regime, but substantially nothing has changed. With an ombudsman in place and the Lodha committee's some of the reforms still sub-judice in the apex court, BCCI is yet to put in the fine print.

Of course, conflict isn’t good for the game and it shouldn’t exist at all. However, some conflicts are good as well and they should exist. But how?

Just imagine if Srinivasan’s state Tamil Nadu has an injured fast bowler and his friend from Chennai turns out to be the best sports orthopaedic, won’t that friend be asked to attend to the cricketer?

When Sachin Tendulkar and his colleague Harbhajan Singh were involved in a legal battle over a racial slur against Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds, it was former BCCI president and incumbent ICC chairman Shashank Manohar’s father VR Manohar, the former advocate general of Maharashtra, who was engaged to bail out the Indian cricketers. It was also a conflict, but a good one. And this is how a good conflict is defined and it should exist in cricket.

Months before the Supreme Court approved the Lodha Committee's reforms including the conflict of interest clauses, BCCI had prepared an internal draft of its own, circulated to all its members in the 2016 Annual General Meeting and agreed upon it ‘in principle’. It was drafted by a very important member of the BCCI legal committee, Abhay Apte, who subsequently became the Maharashtra Cricket Association head, wherein the board was meant to frame a set of conflict rules beyond definition.

Based on the principle that it is difficult to capture tailor-made rules of conflict, the legal committee headed by PS Raman and including Somayajulu Durvasula, Apte suggested a method to study a case wherein someone is gaining wrongfully. The committee also recommended on how the conflict should be brought to record just to ensure that there could be still a conflict beyond definition. Sadly, the board members, however, couldn't find time to implement the suggestions.

“There is nothing wrong in having a policy to overcome the conflict of interest situation, though, it is debatable whether the conflict can be captured by framing rules. The aim of such a policy should be to protect both, the organisation as well as the individual involved from any conflict or appearance of impropriety. The rules should be framed to avoid conflict," Apte had written in the note.

Do Virat Kohli's commercial stakes amount to a conflict of interest?

Come to think of it, even Indian captain Virat Kohli has a conflict in his team. His manager is looking after the commercial interests of other cricketers in the team and the company which is doing that isn’t willing to admit that there is a conflict for the captain. So, everyone’s case should be studied individually.

Therefore, Apte suggested that conflict used for benefits isn't right and suggested that revealing conflicts is imperative to run cricket. And why not? When everyone to do with cricket is supposed to reveal it all, why can’t the players. It is because of these cricketers’ corruption that the Lodha committee was formed to sterilize the game. “The conflict of interest ‘per se’ need not be about creating a wrong, but it becomes a problem when an individual tries to influence the decision or outcome to protect or to give disadvantage to his relationship, thereby putting the organization into loss,” Apte had said in the draft which never saw the light of day – thanks to BCCI’s general body members who themselves have to give the undertaking to stay clear of conflicts.

In the recently uploaded and the apex court approved conflict rules, the board officials are expected to reveal any existing or potential event to BCCI's apex council failing which may lead to disciplinary hearings. The approved constitution also talked about trackable conflicts and removing anyone having non-trackable conflicts. The board too laid down similar outlines to tackle conflicts.

"The most important point in a conflict policy has to be the immediate disclosure of the conflict and to discuss the consequences of the same with the concerned people or authority. This is the most important test to decide the conflict. The rules should only work as the basic parameters but as the conflict may exist even beyond the rules, there should be a system capable of identifying and dealing with such conflict on a case-to-case basis," Apte said while highlighting the role of the Ombudsman, which was recently appointed by the apex court.

Apte rightly recommended that an objective for the conflict rules, forming a three-member working group to keep conflict away from the game, a complaint should be backed by affidavit, imposing punishment for fake complains to defining conflict amongst friends. "Rather than defining them as near relatives, a broader definition such as “a person with whom there exists or existed a close personal relationship (non-arm’s length relationship)” can be scrutinized to decide the conflict, if any," the legal note had said.