With the Supreme Court on Wednesday observing that players and officials having commercial interests should stay away from administering the game, former India captain Sunil Gavaskar clarified that he is “not connected in anyway” with the BCCI administration.
Senior advocate CA Sundaram, appearing for BCCI, gave the names of former greats like Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Krish Srikkanth and Venkatesh Prasad and said that they, in some way or other, have commercial interests in the IPL.
“I was not in court today and I am not aware about the nature of the argument. But I must clarify that I am not in anyway connected with the BCCI administration. The last administrative post that I had was the chairmanship of technical committee back in 2008 or 09. I have not been in any committee since then,” Mr. Gavaskar told NDTV on Wednesday.
“It was on the directive of the Honourable Supreme Court that I was appointed the interim chairman of IPL. After that I haven’t had anything to do with BCCI administration.”
Questioned on being in IPL Governing Council, Mr. Gavaskar further defended, “All I can say is that mine was an appointment and not that I had to fight an election to get into the Governing Council.”
Mr. Gavaskar evaded the question as to why BCCI dragged his name into the issue. “I exactly don’t know what was the context of the argument. I had no administrative position with BCCI.”
About his role as commentator, Mr. Gavaskar said that it doesn’t mean that I have a BCCI role.
“Just like TWI or IMG, BCCI has its own production house and they give contracts to commentators. It’s a proper production house.”
Mr. Gavaskar said that it will only be fair to comment when Supreme Court gives the final verdict as till now what they have given are “observations”.
