Kris ‘Chika’ Srikkanth wears three hats as chief selector, brand ambassador of Chennai Super Kings and member of an expert panel for a television channel.
All three jobs are in conflict with each other.
Any decision that the selection committee makes on retaining Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who leads CSK, as Test and ODI captain will be viewed with suspicion by fans because of the chairman’s ambiguous status.
Being the sport to which a billion Indian hearts beat, the demand for doing away with the opaqueness in cricket administration matters is quite justified. Such conflicts of interest only add to the general air of despondency caused by Team India dropping out early from the T20 Worlds.
There are accusations of Chika favouring players from his franchise. Like the choice of Murali Vijay, the CSK opener, to replace the injured Virender Sehwag in the India team. Vijay may have been picked on a couple of innings in the IPL but the RCB’s reliable Robin Uthappa and Mumbai Indians’ Saurabh Tiwary were overlooked.
In the event, Vijay was impressive against lightweights Afghanistan but stood thoroughly exposed by the bounce in Barbados.
Srikkanth has surely put himself in an embarrassing situation, courtesy his ties with CSK. Selection is often a matter of judgment rather than rendering justice to individual players. Has such judgment got clouded because of his association with a particular team?
Many people wish Srikkanth would disassociate himself from CSK while he sits in judgment on who should be playing for India. A sense of objectivity will be better served were he to think nationally.
Thanks also to N. Srinivasan’s dual standing as BCCI secretary and head honcho of the cement manufacturing company that owns CSK, Indian cricket is already driven by conflicts of interest.
While the company should be free to pursue such a commercial interest, should the BCCI secretary have left himself open to being asked about his personal interests clashing with the Board’s national objectives? The issue gets very ticklish when the national captain, the chairman of selectors and the cricket board secretary all belong to the same franchise.