If Narayanswami Srinivasan were at all prone to introspection, he might now be asking himself: how did it come to this?



How poorly governed did the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the Indian Premier League have to be under his watch to invite such fierce indictment from the Supreme Court – a body that in 65 years of its existence had never interfered to rewrite the cricket board’s constitution. How did he forget that his main duty was to act in the best interest of Indian cricket? Where did he lose his way?



Even his most devoted sycophants will probably have guessed that N Srinivasan has never behaved like someone plagued by self-doubt. Instead, behind closed doors, a man who was once the president of the All India Chess Federation is likely to be planning his next move.



Amendment reversed



On Thursday afternoon, in a landmark 138-page order read out to a packed courtroom in New Delhi, Supreme Court judges Justice TS Thakur and Justice FMI Kalifullah reversed a constitutional amendment made surreptitiously by the BCCI in 2008 – an amendment incorporated to allow Srinivasan, then BCCI treasurer, to own an IPL team, six months after his company, India Cements Ltd, had bid for and won the rights to the IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings.



Until September 2008, Rule 6.2.4 of the BCCI constitution had stated: “No administrator shall have, directly or indirectly, any commercial interest in the matches and events conducted by the board.” After the change, it read: “No administrator shall have, directly or indirectly, any commercial interest in any of the events of the BCCI, excluding IPL, Champions League and Twenty20.”



The Supreme Court struck down the amendment – calling it “the true villain of the situation at hand”.



Rejecting the BCCI’s long-held premise of being a private society, and therefore exempt from scrutiny by the government or judiciary, the judgment also stated that the board’s influence on cricket in the country was “deeply pervasive and complete”. This means the BCCI exercises enormous public functions, which made it obligatory for them to follow the “doctrine of fairness and good faith”.



Intervention long overdue



The highest court in the land has finally staged an intervention. It may be six years overdue, but the cricket-loving public – and the media that have harped on for years about conflict of interest – can take heart that there is justice after all.



Srinivasan will not be able to contest the next BCCI election – six weeks away – unless he gives up his position as owner of India Cements. His son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan is guilty of betting. No cricket official can hold a commercial stake in the game any longer. The only silver lining for Srinivasan was the court’s observation that there was no definitive proof he was trying to cover for Meiyappan, though there might have been a suspicion.



The rot runs deep. Will this Supreme Court order be the start of the clean-up campaign Indian cricket so desperately needs? Only if the court intervenes to rewrite the constitution – not just one clause. And only if the court continues to plays watchdog to a governing body that has shown the only interest it has in the game is commercial.



The Supreme Court has appointed an independent three-member panel to further investigate various aspects of the BCCI’s operations, two franchise owners convicted of betting – Meiyappan and Rajasthan Royals’ Raj Kundra – and Srinivasan’s blue-eyed boy and IPL COO Sundar Raman.



Ruthless record



It may be worth remembering that few men in Indian cricket history have as ruthless a record as Srinivasan. He thought nothing of disowning any official connection with his son-in-law when Meiyappan’s name first came up in the IPL betting scandal in 2013, which triggered the Supreme Court’s involvement. Neither did he think much of turning against his ex-ally AC Muthiah, of forming an alliance with aspiring BCCI president Sharad Pawar to oust Jagmohan Dalmiya, of turning his back on Pawar to join hands with BCCI president Shashank Manohar and get rid of IPL commissioner Lalit Modi (who signed off on the constitutional amendment in 2008), and of saying goodbye to Manohar when he wanted to extend his term as president.



His only allies are the powerless and the unscrupulous. All of this begs the question whether the International Cricket Council – the game’s governing body – will take note of the court order and have a rethink about whether Srinivasan should continue as its president. Then again, the ICC appointed him in June 2014 after the Supreme Court had asked him to stand down as BCCI president.



This is no longer just about the sport in India: the credibility of the global game is at stake. And the time to act was yesterday. But if cricket really is cleaned up, it might – unwittingly – be Srinivasan’s greatest legacy.



