Former International Cricket Council (ICC) chief Ehsan Mani has said that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has anti-Pakistan agenda. "The proof (for that) is very much in front of us. The BCCI has been very active in that. They did not allow Pakistan players to participate in the IPL. You can see that no Pakistani team is involved in the Champions League," he said in an interview.
Mani said the cricket boards in India and Pakistan had always remained independent of military and political tensions between the two countries. He said the current people, who were running the BCCI, had let politics into cricket, he said.
"The Indian government is on record saying that it has not given instructions to the BCCI to exclude Pakistani players from the IPL (Indian Premier League) ," he said.
He pointed out that in Future Tours Programme (FTP) of ICC only four countries were playing among themselves. "And you look at the number of times India played Australia in the last seven or eight years. At the same time, there was no clear cut schedule between India and Pakistan in the new FTP. It was because the ICC was weak. "In my time, every country played with every other country in a four-year cycle. That rule has been corrupted," he added.
To a question about his being critical of ICC functioning he elaborated: "This is for the simple reason that the ICC has three or four processes of electing its presidents. I'm glad that the proposed change, mooted in Hong Kong, has been deferred. The change was going to be very open-ended and do away with the rotation system.
"Having agreed to the rotations and to suddenly change, it smells to me of an agenda. The way John Howard was rejected was not good for the publicity of the ICC. The new system of electing the president will throw us back to the old days when only one country (England) was having its candidate elected as ICC president. The best man should head the ICC," he said.
He said there were very good men in every country. Even Bangladesh and Zimbabwe could throw up good candidates. "The question is: are they going to be nominated? The one good way is to have a certain number of independent directors who are not influenced by any country," he added.
To another question about India-Australia and India-England series making for great economics, he said India-Pakistan series would far exceed the value of any of these series. "This argument of economic viability can hold good from an Australian or English point of view but not from an Indian point of view. The right way forward is to put cricket ahead of politics and financial power," he said. He said cricket was in a sad state of affairs in Pakistan adding that controversies from spot fixing to lack of unity, were because of the mismanagement of the PCB.
He haidled the ICC's legislation regarding de-linking of boards from the governments' influence. "I welcome this legislation. The BCCI can no longer be able to come to the ICC and say that the government does not want an India-Pakistan series."
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