NEW DELHI — A panel appointed by the Supreme Court to assess the operations of India’s cricket board (BCCI) has confirmed it blocked the board from making two payments from its bank accounts but says it is otherwise free to use its funds for “routine expenditure.”
Following local media reports that quoted unnamed BCCI officials as saying they might have to cancel the ongoing series against New Zealand, former chief justice RM Lodha said Tuesday the board’s accounts had not been frozen.
The reputation of the BCCI has been ruined by the freezing of its bank accounts, its president Anurag Thakur said.
Thakur said the board would take a decision soon on the fate of the ongoing home series against New Zealand, which still has a Test and five one-dayers left.
“Without the funds how do we play? How can we function, how can we make payments to the players and the various stakeholders?” Thakur told Reuters.
“We don’t even take money from the government and it’s our own funds. Our accounts have been frozen without even communicating with us.
“Is this how you treat the world’s richest cricket body which has run the sport so efficiently? It has completely destroyed our hard-earned reputation.”
The panel, headed by Lodha, ordered banks to halt the disbursements after the BCCI ignored some of the panel’s recommendations for reforming the world’s richest board, which has been criticized for a perceived lack of transparency.
Sources in the Bank of Maharashtra and Yes Bank, which operate the BCCI accounts, confirmed the accounts were frozen Monday night as they waited for more clarity from the panel which was formed last year to assess BCCI operations.
The banks have now lifted the ban on the accounts after Lodha clarified the BCCI is otherwise free to use its funds for routine expenditure.
“There is no question of cancellation of any game or series,” Lodha told Reuters TV. “The directive, which we issued to BCCI yesterday in our email, is confined to disbursement of large funds to the state associations.
“And banks have been directed to ensure the compliance of that, nothing beyond that. Routine expenses for matches, games, cricketing activities and other administrative matters, they are not at all restrained.
“There is absolutely no prohibition, there is no constraint, the accounts of BCCI have not been frozen.”
On Tuesday, the Indian Express newspaper quoted an unnamed board official as saying that the BCCI’s accounts had been frozen and that the rest of the New Zealand series would have to be scrapped.
A New Zealand Cricket spokesman said they had heard nothing from the BCCI.
“It’s the first time we’ve heard of it,” the spokesman told local media.
“At the moment we are preparing to play the third Test at Indore as scheduled.”
In their report, Lodha and two colleagues recommended age and tenure restrictions for top officials, as well as banning them from serving successive terms.
