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| Will Chief Justice of Jammu Kashmir High Court intervene to save cricket in J&K? | | Affiliation stopped some 50 years ago | | Syed Junaid Hashmi
Early Times Report
JAMMU, Nov 21: If it took Supreme Court to force BCCI to do course correction, will Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court intervene and force Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association to reform itself purely for the promotion of cricket in the state.
32 clubs which includes government institutions and bodies controlled by state is all what Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association (JKCA) has in the name of finding cricketers who would make it to the national level. The talent pool is restricted and limited. A talented cricketer has no option but to somehow find place in one of these clubs or institutions if he aspires to make it to the national scene. He has to please the owners of these cubs and institutions since it is they who have the power to make or mar career of a budding professional cricketer.
JKCA virtually shut doors on new clubs some 50 years ago when someone went to the court and got a stay. Since then, no new club has been granted affiliation and if cricketers are to be believed, the faction ridden JKCA is doing it deliberately. Alongside lobbies based on region, a senior cricketer said that there were also factions based on clubs. Of the 64 votes cast in the JKCA elections, 50 are cast by 25 clubs which are affiliated to the JKCA while there are another 14 voting members from government institutions.
The latter votes are invariably transferred according to the wishes of the party in power in the state which PDP is presently. Because the affiliated club has a vote in the JKCA elections, cricketers maintain that the winning party is keenly invested in picking players from loyalist clubs. In order to keep the number of supplicants manageable, cricketers told Early Times that no new club has received affiliation in the last half a century despite there being hundreds in the state.
Cricketers agree that due to this, it is enormously difficult for players who aren't from an affiliated club to get picked in the state side. And even if picked by an affiliated club, getting selected for the state team often depends on whether your club had backed the winning party in the JKCA elections. Former crickets agree that this makes the task difficult for young and talented cricketers who are playing for unrecognised clubs in any part of the state.
The unrecognised clubs are doing much better than the ones affiliated with JKCA. There is huge talent pool of Jammu and Kashmir but due to this mischievous act of JKCA, they have to either leave cricket at some of time in life or virtually beg the club owners for getting a chance to play for Jammu and Kashmir. Cricketers agree that if JKCA allow the clubs to get affiliated, the ones who have been ruling the roost are likely to get sidelined.
A senior cricketer who is still playing cricket informed that not only court cases but reluctance of the management of the JKCA to allow new clubs to get affiliated has made the task difficult. He informed that a committee headed by retired Principal Session Judge, Jammu Jung Bahadur Singh had taken note of this issue and recommended that general council of JKCA should convene a meeting and immediately correct course. It had asked JKCA to allow registration of new clubs.
It had recommended that rules for affiliation should be framed and the process be started without any further delay. Had JKCA heeded to this, the talent pool of JKCA would have increased and state would have got players from all over the state. But the same was never done. Another cricketer from Jammu said that regionalism too has destroyed cricket in Jammu and Kashmir. "BCCI should allow Jammu region to have its own team. Kashmir region should also get separate team so that the talent in both the regions gets fair chance of playing cricket," said a retired cricketer.
It needs no mention that Cricket has always existed as binary division in Jammu and Kashmir; Kashmir Valley and Jammu province, struggling to be unified whole. Now, the warring administrators have spilled more chaos into the mix. Driven by fear over which group to support, rankled by the inherent injustice, and confused about the court proceedings, the cricketers from the state face a difficult dilemma. That is why, it is important for Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir to take for saving cricket in this trouble torn state. |
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