On Thursday, former India captain Sourav Ganguly was appointed president of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), succeeding the late Jagmohan Dalmiya, who served for 43 years. Ganguly’s appointment was announced by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

Dalmiya died on Sunday evening following a cardiac arrest at the age of 75. He was also the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) at the time, and became the first BCCI chief to die in office. The Board, as per its constitution, will now convene a special general meeting (SGM) within 15 days to elect its new president.

Ganguly joins a significant club of former international cricketers who have taken up top administrative posts in their respective associations in India (or even the BCCI) over the years.

Why cricketers make sense?

The cliched response to this question would be that only players who have gone through the grind would understand the demands made on cricketers, and the problems they confront, and would be more capable of offering solutions. That might well be true. Karnataka cricket, which has been transformed over the last five years, offers the perfect case study.

A panel with some of Karnataka’s most coveted internationals, led by Anil Kumble, won the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) elections in 2010. His team included ex-India internationals like Javagal Srinath, Rahul Dravid, Venkatesh Prasad, Vijay Bharadwaj and Roger Binny, to name a few.

During their term, which lasted till 2013, Kumble & Co. had a fundamental guiding philosophy, centered around grassroots development, or simply, as Srinath said once in an interview with Yahoo Cricket, “to provide international-class facilities to our cricketers."

This included reviving an academy project in Alur, on the outskirts of Bengaluru, on a priority basis. The facility in Alur has three full-fledged cricket grounds, with 20 nets and all turf-wickets, a remarkable sign of progress considering that the whole of the state had only three turf wickets (two in Bengaluru and one in Mysooru) before the Kumble-led regime took over. Besides, they replicated the Alur model with its own grounds in cities like Mysooru, Shimoga and Hubbali.

Srinath, who served as the KSCA secretary in the Kumble-led regime, says, “The ultimate objective should be to provide basic and quality infrastructre for the players. The rest depends on the demands of the respective state associations".

Today, Karnataka has emerged as a model association for big states, with a solid template in grassroots cricketing development. And the results are starting to come.

Karnataka has emerged as the team to beat in the Indian domestic scene. In the last two seasons, they have won consecutive trebles (Ranji Trophy, Vijay Hazare Trophy and the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy), a feat that is unprecedented. Several of their cricketers, the likes of KL Rahul, Karun Nair, Manish Pandey and Stuart Binny have made it to the national team, with more representing India A.

The case against cricketers

Former players often enter cricket politics with the most noble of intentions, born out of their own experiences, or in some cases, a revolutionary or emotional streak, which seeks to change the existing narrative in the state, thereby altering and affecting the power dynamics. And then there’s power (and money, of course).

Take the case of Hyderabad cricket under former India off-spinner Shivlal Yadav.

His stint in the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) as its vice-president has seen several controversies and allegations, including a case of alleged misappropriation of funds to the tune of Rs200 crore from 2004 onwards during the construction of an international stadium.

Following a complaint by two HCA members, the Andhra anti-corruption bureau (ACB) began investigating these allegations against Yadav and 22 other officials. The current HCA president, also a former Test cricketer, Arshad Ayub, has also been named in the ACB complaint.

Besides, Yadav has also been accused of nepotism for promoting his son Arjun and his brother Rajesh, who was the state’s coach for a long period of time.

While he will be credited for building the stadium at Uppal, Yadav’s tenure at the HCA has also coincided with Hyderabad’s stunning, unchecked decline in cricketing fortunes, with the state languishing in the lowest tier of domestic years for a long spell with no real signs of improvement.

Earlier this year, Indian left-arm spinner Pragyan Ojha, the only current international from Hyderabad, switched over to Bengal to rejuvenate his chances of breaking into the national team again.

Ganguly will benefit from past stint

When he takes hands-on charge as CAB president, Sourav Ganguly will have the benefit of a unique worldview, both as a player and as a fledgling administrator. His late father Chandidas Ganguly was also an influential and long-serving member of the CAB, rising through the ranks to become a member of the association’s trustee board.

Even before he formally entered the CAB as an official, as chief of the CAB’s cricket development committee, Ganguly launched an ambitious Vision 2020 programme last year, which seeks to emulate Mumbai and Karnataka to make West Bengal a constant supply line for the national team.

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