More egg on the BCCI face!

Many years ago, a friend of mine had likened the goings-on in the Indian cricket board to a drunken couple performing a waltz -- one step forward, two steps backward. We have just seen another stand out performance from the BCCI, to take the dancing metaphor a step forward, now that Ford has refused to tango.

That Ford fellow is rather smart. He sussed up the situation pretty quickly during his brief stay in India on Saturday and his instinct for self-preservation must have prevailed over the lure of, despite its obvious pressures and considerable distractions, taking up what must be one of the hottest jobs in international cricket today.

On the face of it, Ford had seemed an excellent choice for the job. His record was second only to the Australian John Buchanan, among post-1999 coaches. He was a low-key person, something of a welcome quality in Indian cricket right now, after the departure of the oh-so-media-saavy Greg Chapell. But all that's water under the bridge now. For, as Sunil Gavaskar said yesterday, the Board is back to square one.

Ford's refusal to take up the Indian coaching job, less than 48 hours after the dramatic announcement of his appointment by the BCCI, is only the latest in a series of eminently avoidable situations the Indian cricket board finds itself. Ford's snub comes in the wake of Nimbus walking out of a deal to cover the Afro-Asian cricket series and Zee Network's decision to cancel the contract to telecast offshore cricket matches involving India.

Then Kapil Dev, honorary director of the National Cricket Academy, and Kiran More, the last chief selector of Indian cricket, have embarrassed the BCCI by associating openly with TV moghul Subhash Chandra's proposed cricket league. More who was not too long ago accused of seeking bribe to select a player rather bluntly told a TV channel the other day : "Even the petrol I use to drive to the Mahrashtra Cricket Association's office is paid by me." Not very haqppy days for the Indian cricket board, eh?

A potentially embarrassing, if not downright explosive, situation could still emerge out of the protracted contracts negotiations. Though the Board is understood to have offered more money to the players in the form of higher television revenue share, the players are almost unanimously opposed to the cap on endorsements -- a decision that was taken in the first place without much reason and more as a populist step to convince the Indian cricketing public and the Board's eventual paymasters that the BCCI could act tough with non-performing players.

There is also the little matter of protecting the interest of the Board's official sponsors as opposed to the sponsors of individual players. Adidas has already taken Nike to court over a sponsorship row involving Sachin Tendulkar. Surely the last hasn't been heard on that matter. An ineffective BCCI would in the days to come be open to more such litigations as sponsor interests clash. Not surprisingly the Adidas case, I'm told, is being watched with considerable interest in the Indian corporate world.

Meanwhile, my friend who had come up with the drunken couple performing a waltz one liner came up with yet another gem last night to describe the Ford fiasco.

He said, more egg on the face wouldn't bother the Indian cricket mandarins. He said : "I am sure one of these days someone like Lalit Modi, the current Mr. Moneybags of Indian cricket, would grandly announce that with so much of egg around, the Indian cricket board has decided to get into the poultry business!"