Dubai: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the world’s richest cricket board, but they slipped into an embarrassing situation on Sunday when they missed out renewing their official website domain www.bcci.tv on time. The board seems to have forgotten to renew the domain, and the website registrars — register.com and namejet.com — have put the domain name up for public bidding.
The domain www.bcci.tv is said to be valid from 2-2-2006 to 2-2-2019. However, the expiry date happened to be February 3, 2018. This slip from the board has resulted in a huge embarrassment for them, especially when the senior national men’s team was playing the second ODI against South Africa at Centurion and that this website is keenly followed by cricket fans. Many visit the site for live scores of India’s matches. This website also regularly posts key documents related to functioning of the board.
The board officials became aware of their domain’s dysfunction only on Sunday. Incidentally, the board is in a long drawn battle with the Supreme Court following some of the officials and several of their state units opposition to the implementation of the Lodha Committee report to streamline the activities of the board. So it is now run by a Supreme Court appointed panel of administrators who act as the interim bosses of the board.
Following the dysfunction incident, the domain was put up for public bidding and there are reportedly seven bids with the highest being $270! And this is the same board, which is one among the most powerful sporting bodies, had recently bagged $2.55 billion for granting the Indian Premier League media rights to Star Sports, and is also the highest revenue earner from the International Cricket Council receiving $405millon.
To make it even more embarrassing for the board, it was found that the website was owned by former IPL chairman and Commissioner Lalit Modi. BCCI had suspended Modi after being accused of misconduct, indiscipline and financial irregularities. He was also banned for life in 2013.
Anyone now clicking on the website gets the message from register.com saying “Bid on this Domain Name now”!
