No long-term place of CoA in BCCI, says Vinod Rai

‘It is still a long haul, but that ends in October’

Vinod Rai, the head of the Board of Control for Cricket in India Committee of Administrators (CoA), has hoped that the Cricket Board and the state associations will implement the Lodha Committee recommendations by October.

Rai also said that he does not see a long-term place for the Supreme Court-appointed committee in the nation's cricket governing body.

The CoA is ‘optimistic’ that it would wrap its job of helping the BCCI and state associations implement the Lodha Committee recommendations by October.

"It is still a long haul, but that ends in October," Rai told ESPNcricinfo, after the committee completed 100 days in the job.

"I am very realistic, because I don't see a place for the CoA in the BCCI in the long term," he added.

Rai further said the CoA wants to provide a structure to the BCCI, which it lacks at present.

"We want to provide a structure to the BCCI. It does not have one right now. It is run by individual styles. It is personality-oriented. We will put a structure in place and ensure that there are systems that will make this structure work," he said.

The Supreme Court earlier on January 2 removed Anurag Thakur and Ajay Shirke from their respective posts of BCCI president and board secretary for their failure to bring transparency and accountability to the Indian cricket board and their non-compliance of the court's July 18, 2016 order.

On January 30, the apex court had appointed a new four-member BCCI panel of administrators led by Vinod Rai, along with noted historian Ramachandra Guha, managing director of IDFC Limited Vikram Limaye and former captain of the women's cricket team Diana Edulji as other administrators.

It was said that they will function as the new interim bosses of the BCCI and run the day-to-day administration of BCCI till the Justice (retd.) R.M Lodha-led recommendations are fully implemented and elections are held.

More recently, the Supreme Court-appointed CoA had to step in to resolve the uncertainty around India's participation in the Champions Trophy, after the board missed the April 25 deadline to submit its squad.

In the wake of the ICC proposing a new financial model which reduces the BCCI's revenues from $ 570 million to $ 293 million, the latter had deliberately missed the April 25 deadline for submission of the squad and that there were speculations that they might pull out of the tournament.

Last Friday, the CoA, in a strongly worded statement, ordered the BCCI to refrain from taking any decision that might harm the interests of Indian cricket.

"It [May 6] was the first time I was meeting the state associations. So that was my opening gambit, to say to them, 'Look, we need to be in conversation with each other.' They are all positively oriented, thinking people. The only thing is their thinking and their perspective was exceedingly narrow," Rai said.

"They just did not know that there was an ICC governance model and a finance model. And the finance model, as far as we are concerned, is crumbs."

"I told them if the BCCI members had decided to withdraw from the ICC on the basis of the differences on the governance model, the CoA will back them. But not on the finance model. You cannot put Indian cricket at risk," he added.

With the new revenue model getting the nod, BCCI will now have to do with what they have in the eight-year cycle. The England Cricket Board received 143 million dollars while Zimbabwe Cricket received 94 million dollars.

The remaining seven Full Members will receive 132 million dollars each. The Associate Members will receive a funding of 280 million dollars. This model was passed by a vote of 13 to 1.