MCA may convert CIC into technical committee

A committee of cricketers set up ten years ago by the then Mumbai Cricket Association president Sharad Pawar to improve the game could be discontinued or converted into a technical committee.

"I am going to put forward the proposal to convert CIC into the technical committee that would work on the lines of the Cricket Board and the ICC. They would formulate the rules and regulations of various tournaments conducted by us," MCA chief Ravi Savant said in Mumbai on Wednesday.

"Mr Pawar had constituted CIC to give the reins on cricketing matters to cricketers, to improve cricket, but it was not happening," Savant said.

The CIC was in the news recently with three former cricketers putting in their papers all of a sudden alleging they were treated like "dustbin" by some committee members.

Former cricketers Balwinder Sandhu, Karsan Ghavri and Nilesh Kulkarni had resigned from CIC.

"One of the cricketers who resigned from CIC, Karsan Ghavri, did not even attend that meeting of the committee. He has played good cricket for India. His action was instigated. The point is he is also one of our managing committee members. He said later he was misguided," noted Savant.

"There were heated arguments in one CIC committee meeting and one of the members (Deepak Patil) was also not correct (in the way he behaved)," he added.

Savant also hit out at former selector Milind Rege without mentioning the former Mumbai Ranji Trophy player's name for resigning from the selection panel.

"The fourth person (Rege), who quit from the selection committee, had said yes (for making Abey Kuruvilla as chief selector above him) and then resigned," he said.

Savant said Sachin Tendulkar and Zaheer Khan are available to play in Mumbai's Ranji Trophy opener against Railways from November 2-5, before the home Test series against England.

"Yes, both Sachin and Zaheer are available for the game. Our secretary (Nitin Dalal) is following it up," he said.