Gautam Bhattacharyya: Kapil Dev finally ‘eligible’ for lifetime award

There could be very few unanimous choices like Kapil Dev for the Indian cricket board’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and it comes as a really heartening piece of news. It also marks the formal end of a frosty relationship between the legend and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) that lasted more than five years.

However, those who are aware of the sub-plot behind the recognition know what it had taken the country’s best-ever all-rounder — Wisden’s Indian Cricketer of the Century — to finally be ‘eligible’ for the C.K. Nayudu award. It’s not much different from the manner the BCCI has its way on issues of world cricket administration — be it opposition to the Decision Review System (DRS) or the cold shoulder to Cricket South Africa for daring to appoint Haroon Lorgat as its CEO against the BCCI’s wishes.

It was in July last year that Dev finally decided to bury the hatchet with the board by resigning from his post at the Zee TV-owned company that launched the long-defunct Indian Cricket League (ICL). Following Dev’s association with the ICL, which had been a bone of contention over five years of the conflict, the board settled for nothing short of a written apology from the cricketer before he could be welcomed back into the mainstream.

Dev had, in his statement, likened the board to a father figure and the likes of him as its “children”, while he had wholesome praise for its boss N. Srinivasan’s contribution to the game. For someone who had earlier refused to seek the Indian board’s so-called amnesty in 2008 for the cricketers who were blacklisted by the BCCI (the board also influenced the ICC to ban the international cricketers who were part of ICL), the compromise perhaps made more sense then fighting a losing battle.

The BCCI had, all along, withheld his pension and did not release his one-off benefit purse of nearly $270,000 (Dh991,567) until Dev tendered his apology. The moment his involvement with the ICL became public, it had summarily sacked him as Chairman of the National Cricket Academy and shunned him at its official functions. The only occasion during Dev’s exile when he was part of any BCCI celebrations was when he turned up at the silver jubilee of India’s first-ever World Cup triumph in 2008.

Mind you, it was not Srinivasan but Sharad Pawar who was the board supremo when it decided to punish Dev for his role in the ICL. While the so-called rebel league zeroed in on retired or semi-retired cricketers along with predominantly first class cricketers to line up the teams, the BCCI simply hijacked the idea and came up with its dream project — the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Now that he is part of the BCCI fold, it may be only a matter of time before he is inducted into the IPL governing council or handed any other plum post. The cycle would then be complete!