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Ireland captain disappointed but phlegmatic about decision to host key contest in Chelmsford

Andrew Miller08-May-2023Andrew Balbirnie, Ireland’s captain, says that the return of Josh Little from IPL duty is a good indicator of the importance of their three-match World Cup Super League clash with Bangladesh, which gets underway in Chelmsford on Tuesday.Little, Ireland’s outstanding left-arm seamer, has been a mainstay of Gujarat Titans’ table-topping outfit in the ongoing IPL, claiming six wickets in the tournament to date including a Player-of-the-Match-winning haul of 2 for 25 against Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens last week.But, with Ireland needing a clean-sweep of their three-match series to have any chance of displacing South Africa in eighth place in the World Cup Super League standings, and thereby secure automatic qualification for the main event in India this year, Little has linked back up with his Ireland team-mates for the first time since the tour of Zimbabwe in January.Related

• Mrittunjoy Chowdhury replaces injured Taskin Ahmed for Ireland ODIs

• Stirling picked, Little rested for Lord's Test against England

• Ireland host Bangladesh in final Super League contest as South Africa watch on

“It’s a huge boost,” Balbirnie said on the eve of the first ODI. “He has become a world-class operator, and we’re very grateful to have him back into the squad for these games. He’s obviously had a really good time of it at the IPL, so to have him throughout this week for these games is a great boost for us as a group, and obviously for the bowlers as well, and the learnings that they take from him. Hopefully, from our point of view, he can have a good week performance-wise and have an impact for us.”There’s a lot of talk, and plenty being written and said about it,” Balbirnie added, referencing the ongoing debate about the future of international cricket amid the proliferation of T20 leagues. “But we’re just happy that [Josh] is playing for us. He’s very close with the group, and grew up with a lot of us, and there’s no angst about him not playing for us in certain games. We’re just delighted with the progress he’s made.”He’s on the world stage and performing, and that’s something that has proven to a lot of the group that it can be done, with hard work and discipline. Having only bowled four-over spells over a period of time, to come in and bowl ten overs will maybe be a bit taxing on him. But he’s a pretty fit guy and he’s just a really good player for us now. We’re just very lucky to have him for the week.”The challenge of the making the switch from a spin-friendly surface in Jaipur, the scene of his most recent IPL outing on Friday, to an overcast Chelmsford will be a tough one for Little. However, several of his team-mates – Balbirnie included – are faced with a similar adjustment, following their most recent Test against Sri Lanka in Galle, in which they lost by an innings despite posting an impressive 492 in their first innings.Josh Little claimed a hat-trick for Ireland against New Zealand in the recent T20 World Cup•AFP/Getty Images

Balbirnie himself made scores of 95 and 46 in the Test, with Paul Stirling and Curtis Campher both posting centuries, and despite the disappointment in the final result, Ireland’s captain was happy to take the positives from the performance.”Going from Galle to Chelmsford, it’s certainly two different ends of the spectrum, but when you’re just looking at it as a bat-versus-ball contest, it is nice to know that you’ve got a bit of form in the bank over the last couple of weeks. So hopefully, us as batters can take that forward into this week”I can only speak for myself, but batting is batting, no matter what the format is. You’re going to be confident because you’ve got runs, albeit on a very, very good wicket, it gives confidence that you can do it for a long period of time against good bowling.”Given the importance of the series, and the potential reward if Ireland can achieve their aim of a 3-0 clean-sweep, Balbirnie admitted it was a disappointment not to be playing their home series on home soil. However, he added that he accepted the logistical constraints – a combination of poor weather prospects and Cricket Ireland’s costly overheads for setting up temporary facilities – and backed his players to put their best foot forward regardless.”I’m not going to sit here and say that we want to be here necessarily,” he said. “Essex have been really good at facilitating us, they’ve made us feel as home as possible, but certainly as an Irish cricketer, you want to play your home games in Ireland and you want to play in front of your crowd that are really passionate about the game, and friends and family and stuff.”So it’s slightly disappointing but, at the same time, we’ve got to just get on with it. We don’t make those decisions, and I don’t want to dwell too much on it, because we are here and it’s not going to change. We try to win games of cricket for Ireland and hopefully some people make the trip over this week.”The likelihood, however, is that Bangladesh’s wealth of UK-based support – not least the communities in East London for whom Chelmsford is a half-hour commute – will flock to the three games to create an atmosphere that rather favours the visitors.”To be honest, I think no matter where we play in the world, there’ll probably be more Bangladeshi people there than Irish. Even if we’re playing in Dublin, there’d be a big Bangladeshi crowd here. We want to play in front of a lot of people, we want to showcase our skills and make our game bigger. So if we can put in performances against a hostile Bangladesh crowd, then great. But I do hope to see a bit of Irish colour in the crowd as well. Naturally, we want to play in front of our people and hopefully put on a good show.”

“I was like a passenger in the Afghanistan series, which is never desirable. I didn’t enjoy the ODIs and T20Is”

Mohammad Isam06-Mar-2022Shakib Al Hasan has said that he needs a break from international cricket, indicating to the BCB’s cricket operations chairman Jalal Yunus that he could opt out of the ODI series against South Africa later this month, so that he can come back mentally and physically fresh for the Test series in the same tour.Shakib was named in both the squads last week after BCB president Nazmul Hassan claimed that the allrounder had agreed to go for the Tests too.However, on Sunday before leaving Dhaka for Dubai for a personal engagement, Shakib said that he felt like a “passenger” in the just-concluded Afghanistan series, where he made 74 runs and took seven wickets in the three ODIs and two T20Is.”Considering my mental and physical state, I don’t think I can play so much international cricket,” Shakib said. “If I get a break, if I get my interest back, I can play with more ease. I was like a passenger in the Afghanistan series, which is never desirable. I didn’t enjoy the ODIs and T20Is. I don’t think I should be in the South Africa tour with such a mentality. I want to meet everyone’s expectations when I am playing. There’s no guarantee of my best performance, but at least I will know that I tried hardest for the country. I don’t want to waste the time or someone’s spot. Playing in this way, as a passenger, it will be like betraying or cheating my team-mates and the country.”Shakib said that he did tell BCB chief Hassan that he will tour for both formats in South Africa, but he was having second thoughts during the Afghanistan series.”I have informed Jalal who told me to think about it for a couple of days. I am expecting a decision after that. I had earlier spoken with Papon that I will play both the series but I thought long and hard since the match yesterday. Looking at my mental and physical condition, I need a bit of time. I might skip the ODI series to play the Tests in a better physical condition.”Shakib said that he wants the BCB to chalk out a year-long plan for him by taking into account the advanced stage of his career. He said that he had asked the BCB for a break from all Tests till mid-November, not for just six months as Hassan had said last week.”I think at this stage of my career, I need a long-term plan. I think it is important that we have clarity about everything. My letter to the board didn’t mention six months. I told the board that I wanted to stay out of Tests till November 22 this year. I wanted to concentrate fully on white-ball cricket. We have two World Cups in the next two years.”I didn’t want to leave Tests totally, but because we are finding a bit of balance in the Test side, I felt that if I focus on white-ball, considering my age and physical fitness, I could have done better in ODIs and T20Is. I think it is better if I know the long-term plan about me. There’s no point thinking series-by-series.”Bangladesh are scheduled to leave for South Africa on March 12. They will play three ODIs on March 18, 20 and 23, as well as two Tests from March 31 to April 8.

Allrounder points to throwaway comments on skin colour and a lack of cultural training for professional cricketers

Daniel Brettig08-Sep-2020Casual racism within Australian cricket has been allowed to fester through a lack of adequate cultural awareness education for players, support staff and officialdom over the past two decades, leaving many to consider their past behaviour through the prism of the Black Lives Matter movement.This is one of many uncomfortable conclusions to be drawn from Cricket Australia’s first attempt to reckon with its past and present mistakes in dealing with Indigenous players and issues of race more generally. It takes the form of a series of discussion panels under the banner of Cricket Connecting Country that will air on the governing body’s digital platforms on Wednesday night, hosted by the CA board director Mel Jones.In a discussion featuring two noted experts on race and culture in Nyadol Nyuon, a commercial litigator with the Melbourne law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler, and Janine Mohamed, chief executive of the Lowitja Institute dedicated to Aboriginal health, the Indigenous Australian cricketer Dan Christian catalogued the extent of casual racism he had experienced, largely around ignorant critiques of his Aboriginality based on his appearance.”I think it is an issue in Australian cricket, I don’t think it’s as ‘in your face’ as you might see around the world or even elsewhere in Australian culture,” Christian told the panel. “I think it’s definitely there, it’s more of a casual racism, just little throwaway lines here and there, made to be jokes and a lot of that for me personally has been around the colour of my skin and the fact that I don’t look Aboriginal or whatever that means. That’s the most noticeable thing for me.”It’s just something that comes with a lack of education and an ignorance. I don’t think a lot of people say it with any kind of malice, it’s just that they don’t understand and don’t know. When all the BLM stuff came out in the last couple of months, one of the things I related to the most was Meyne Wyatt’s monologue on QandA, which I thought was absolutely brilliant. There’s one little section of that where he talks about being asked that question and his comment back to whoever asked it was ‘well what part am I, is it my foot, is it my arm, is it my leg’. I’ve had those kinds of questions a lot and it was a pretty good way to look at it.”However I’ve received a lot of messages over the past few months from people I’ve played with and against that have said ‘sorry if I’ve ever said anything to you that you’ve been offended by, please help, I’d love to know more about your personal story, your family story, things that I can do in the community to try and help out’ and so from that perspective I think it’s been a wonderful thing to have happened to be able to have that conversation and for people to want to make change.”Christian noted, somewhat ruefully, that he had received more education about cultural awareness and understanding of the many and varied racial backgrounds in Australian life during a brief stint in a public service job prior to his professional cricket career, than in any of the many seasons since.”Before I started playing cricket I was working for the government in the Indigenous employment branch in the department of employment and workplace relations in the early 2000s, and one of the first things I did when I had that job, and the whole department had to go through it, was cross-cultural awareness training,” he said. “So you learned all sorts of things about our own culture and other cultures and how to integrate, and all that stuff.”It was all really interesting, fantastic, relevant stuff. That was in the early 2000s. I’ve been playing cricket ever since, and not once have I ever been through any kind of training or heard about any kind of training like that throughout cricket. So that’s one thing we could at least do to raise some awareness and to educate people within our sport. I just don’t think that’s something we’ve ever looked at in the past, and I think, particularly now is a great chance to do something like that.”Australia’s cricketers are still on their own journey to a better understanding of the game’s rich Aboriginal history, including the 1868 tour of England by an Indigenous team that was the first ever overseas visit by any representative sporting team from this country. In many ways the women’s team has been able to progress more fully on the path towards proper understanding and connection than their male equivalents.Dan Christian in his follow-through•Getty Images

This was underlined by how, after the men’s limited-overs team captain Aaron Finch stated that the team would not be “taking a knee” in recognition of the BLM movement before their first T20I in England last week, the Australian women’s team vice-captain Rachael Haynes stated that a deeper understanding of Indigenous culture and its connection to cricket had made numerous observances, both last year and in planning for the season to come, so much more meaningful.”The great thing about being involved with it was that it wasn’t a superficial event,” Haynes said of the team donning Indigenous-inspired uniforms for the Reconcilitation match played against England last summer. “Quite often when we do things on the field, you walk out as a player and you’re just part of that one moment and then you move on and you play the game. One of the things I really enjoyed about being involved in it was it started perhaps six months before that moment.”CA came and presented to us on the whole concept and then spoke about the jersey that was going to get produced and we did some activities leading into it as well to get an appreciation of indigenous culture and for me as a player that was much more valuable than just stepping out onto the field and going through the ceremony and not perhaps understanding different moments you were part of.”I think that’s something sport has a responsibility to do, is just because the lights and cameras are out and flashing, that’s not just the moment you’re looking to capture. If you want to be impactful long-term, you’ve actually got to take the opportunity leading in to educate the players on what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and what the opportunity is as well. Rather than just getting them to step out onto the field and be part of a ceremony which is really symbolic and great to be part of, but that shouldn’t be where it stops and starts.”Nevertheless, Haynes acknowledged the fact that instances of racist language and behaviour were still far more frequent in Australian cricket than anyone should condone, citing a recent example she had witnessed personally.”When I did hear it I was really taken aback in the moment and the situation, because it came from a place where it didn’t come from a teammate or the team environment, it came from a place surrounding that, and in a moment where I didn’t envisage that would happen,” Haynes said. “I did say something to call it out, but it really hit home to me that much of the points that are being raised around casual racism, even how its ingrained in some younger children, not even really knowing that’s what they’re being taught.”There’s lots of things we need to do to overcome that, how we talk in the media, how we call out behaviour. I think there’s a huge role for sport to play in that. We’ve started to see that as well even with other codes, people are really starting to call out poor behaviour, we’ve seen that a lot on social media. So sport has a huge role to play in trying to make people accountable for some of the things they’re saying.”Nyuon and Mohamed concluded their own many insights by noting that any “allies” to the cause of Black and Aboriginal justice needed to be well stocked with resilience and willingness to struggle. This first episode of Cricket Connecting Country, to be followed by two others, helps CA to enter into the many difficult conversations that will entail.

Sean Dickson, Heino Kuhn shine with the bat as task proves too great for Surrey’s bowlers

Daniel Norcross at Beckenham23-May-2019By the end of this fluctuating, frequently fascinating match, 22 players and a couple of physios will quite definitely have earned their sleep. Whether Surrey’s bowlers, who threw everything they had at a Kent side that showed exceptional character to survive a turbulent fourth day and force a draw, will be able to achieve the sanctuary of somnolence, is an altogether different matter.Kent began the day needing an additional, and highly improbable 380 runs to pull off victory with nine wickets in hand. Had they succeeded it would have been the 12th-highest successful run chase in County Championship history. The fact that scribes were rushing around, consulting scorers and
archivists in search of this arcane statistic tells you how well Kent’s middle order negotiated the bulk of a terrific day.Adam Riley, the nightwatchman, survived what in retrospect was a crucial 35 minutes before Sam Curran uprooted his leg stump with a yorker speared in from round the wicket. But in what proved perhaps the pivotal moment of the match shortly after, Curran was forced from the field, clutching
his hamstring. Surrey have had wretched luck with injuries this season, and being a bowler down on an unresponsive track under glorious blue skies put an ultimately impossible burden on the pace bowling trio of Morne Morkel, Rikki Clarke and Conor McKerr. Throughout this match the new ball has been a disproportionately powerful weapon. To be deprived of their chief exponent of swing was a cruel blow so early in the day.What followed was the day’s first flashpoint. Clarke, twice in two balls was convinced he had Daniel Bell-Drummond. The first was a superb piece of umpiring by Graham Lloyd who adjudged that the noise everyone heard was in fact the ball brushing the back of the batsman’s leg. The second decision was perhaps a little tighter. Bell-Drummond looked to be trapped bang in front on the knee roll. He might just about have jammed the ball into his pad. If he hadn’t, he was stone dead.Clarke took the latter view and expressed his displeasure. The umpires convened. Words were spoken. We will find out soon enough if there are ramifications. Surrey have been reprimanded before, and rather too often for their comfort. They really don’t need an appearance before the Cricket
Disciplinary Commission. The sound and fury was soon forgotten as Bell-Drummond was adjudged lbw in Clarke’s next over.Three down at lunch and the game was still very much Surrey’s for the winning. By tea, thoughts had flipped to an improbable and spectacular Kent run chase as Surrey’s bowlers laboured with the older ball. Once again Sean Dickson defied the attack with a compact and organised display. He fell nine runs short of what would have been his second century of the match, edging Clarke behind.Between now and late July many eyes will be on potential England openers for the Ashes. Dickson might just be one to keep an eye on. His wicket was the only one to fall in that middle session and Kent went to tea requiring a further 193 to win from 35 overs with six wickets in hand. Six and a half really given Riley’s nightwatchman status.Morkel inevitably was entrusted with the new ball as soon as it became available. Immediately he picked up Ollie Robinson, caught at midwicket to end a stand of 70 with Kent’s captain Heino Kuhn, who was threatening to reach the parts that other diminutive South African-born middle-order batsmen can’t reach.Robinson’s departure was followed soon after, though, by Kuhn, who was at the very least dismayed, incandescent with fury perhaps, when Lloyd decided that a ball that leaped from Morkel and seemed to take his shoulder was judged to have grazed his bat en route.At 263 for 6 and with another 26 overs to be bowled, fleeting thoughts of Kent’s highest fourth-innings run chase were abandoned. It was all about the draw now. Had Clarke, who bowled magnificently throughout this game, not overstepped when enticing an edge from Wiaan Mulder (again umpire Lloyd the adjudicator) into the momentarily gleeful hands of Dean Elgar at slip, that draw would most likely never have come. Instead Mulder hung on to the end to register an unbeaten half-century on his Kent debut to go with his five wickets.Alex Blake and Darren Stevens negotiated 70 balls between them and Harry Podmore managed to see out the last four overs to bring home ten points for the home side.Promoted teams often struggle in Division One. This year only one side will be relegated. In the last ten years, an average of eight points per match has been enough every year but one to guarantee finishing above the bottom club. Kent have so far managed 43 points in four matches. More importantly, they have stood toe to toe with the champions and despite a poor session at the end of day two, have come out with honours even.Their fans needn’t fear relegation. After a performance like this, they can entertain loftier ambitions.

Cricket Australia has made a written complaint to Cricket South Africa about taunts largely directed at the partners and families of Steven Smith’s team

Daniel Brettig in Cape Town23-Mar-2018Personal abuse directed by Newlands spectators at the Australian side during the third Test has been labelled “disgraceful” by the coach Darren Lehmann, as Cricket South Africa responded to a written complaint from Cricket Australia following taunts about the partners and families of Steven Smith’s team.David Warner’s post-dismissal exchange with a spectator on day two was the visible tip of an iceberg’s worth of abuse over the first two days of the match, with nine spectators ejected on day two, after three had been blocked from entry on day one for wearing offensive t-shirts on the opening day. None of the ejected spectators have been banned from returning later in the match.Lehmann said the abuse, typically directed at the nearest Australian fielder to the boundary when the South African side was batting on days one and two, was the worst his team had witnessed anywhere in the world. “We accept it all around the world, but as soon as they cross the line and they talk about players’ families the whole time and getting abused like that, it’s just not on,” Lehmann said. “There’s been various incidents throughout the Test series but this one has taken the cake.”I think it’s been disgraceful. You’re talking about abuse of various players and their families and personal abuse, it’s not on at a cricket ground anywhere around the world, not just here, it shouldn’t happen. You can have the banter, that’s fine, banter is good-natured, fun by crowds but they’ve gone too far here. We’ve written to Cricket South Africa, Cricket Australia have done that, we’ll see their response, but it’s been poor. We’ll see what happens, hopefully something.”In response, South Africa’s acting chief executive, Thabang Moroe, said fans on both sides needed to behave. “Cricket South Africa and the players appreciate the fans’ passionate support displayed at all our games,” he said. “However the events that transpired today were not tolerable and something that we don’t want to see at any of our Test matches.”We have since taken it upon ourselves to beef up our security personnel to ensure that players from both sides don’t have to endure such unfortunate behavior. Both CSA and the players encourage supporters to continue rooting for their teams and also to behave in a decorous manner that will allow this Test series to be played in true spirit of the game.”Australian touring teams have long acknowledged that they receive some of their harshest treatment from spectators in South Africa, although up to this point Warner’s tour had involved more exchanges with opponents than fans. In Durban he was captured on CCTV cameras exchanging words with Quinton de Kock, then responding angrily to the response from the South African wicketkeeper and needing to be physically restrained by team-mates as he climbed the stairwell at Kingsmead.That incident saw Warner fined and handed three demerit points under the ICC code of conduct, meaning he is one further disciplinary infraction away from a ban. De Kock was also fined over the episode, albeit on a lesser charge. Warner had alleged that his aggression was sparked by de Kock making personal remarks about his wife Candice.Between Test matches, offensive masks were distributed by fans in reference to her brief bathroom encounter with the rugby league player Sonny Bill Williams years before she and Warner became a couple. Two Cricket South Africa officials, Clive Eksteen and Altaaf Kazi, were suspended by the home board after allowing fans wearing the masks to be admitted to St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth and then posing with them for a photograph. In Cape Town, the t-shirt fans were barred from wearing into the ground stated “Warner where’s your wife? She’s just gone to the toilet for a minute”, while abuse of other players and their partners ramped up.”Yep it was personal and it was poor and he wasn’t the only one,” Lehmann said of the taunts at Warner. “There’s always going to be banter, as long as it doesn’t get personal, but it has gone too far with the crowd here and they’ve got to be better than that when they’re coming to international arenas to watch a game of two quality sides playing against each other. They go hard on the ground, there’s no doubt about that, but off the ground you don’t expect that when you’re leaving the ground or you’re having a go at someone’s family. It’s just disgraceful.”David Warner’s stump goes cartwheeling•AFP

Morne Morkel, who took his 300th Test wicket on day two, stopped short of criticising the Newlands crowd, and stated he had been on the receiving end of abuse from crowds in Australia.”We can’t control that. Unfortunately, there is a bit of alcohol and there’s hot sun and we expect that,” Morkel said. “When we play in Australia, I have played in Melbourne, I have copped the same sort of abuse. It’s part of the game but there is a line and its important not to cross that.”The crowd here is always amazing. They come out and support us all the time. Tomorrow is going to be even louder being a Saturday. It’s always special playing here at Newlands. It’s the marquee event and the way they get behind the boys and lift us up when we are out in the field is special.”South African teams playing in Australia have a history of facing verbal abuse or worse, dating back to the spin bowler Pat Symcox having a cooked chicken thrown at him on the SCG outfield during a limited-overs match in 1997. On more recent tours, other members of the South African side, including Hashim Amla, have been subjected to racial taunts. In 2005-06, Andre Nel, Makhaya Ntini, Ashwell Prince, Garnett Kruger and Shaun Pollock were among players racially abused.”None of the team minds any form of abuse because it happens in any country, the home side really gets behind it,” South Africa’s then coach Mickey Arthur said at the time. “But we feel once it becomes a racist taunt then the boundaries are being overstepped and the South African team categorically deplores that type of behaviour. I don’t think we can do too much more other than just make our point that we categorically deplore it and we do feel that boundaries are being crossed when that sort of thing transpires out there.”The events of that summer brought a fiercer focus from CA on crowd behaviour at grounds, including a “zero tolerance” policy for racial abuse, which could attract a life ban from venues. Advertising campaigns were also devised to educate spectators as to what was appropriate and what was not.Asked about crowd behaviour in Australia, Lehmann said improvement was needed across the board. “That’s not good enough from an Australian crowd point of view either,” he said. “We’ve just got to get better at watching the game of cricket, actually supporting both teams generally, and that’s something that both boards have got to get around.”

The Supreme Court, in a significant reprieve to BCCI and state office-bearers, has allowed them to serve separate nine-year terms at central and state level

Nagraj Gollapudi20-Jan-20171:58

Ugra: Attorney general’s intervention a sign of government backing BCCI

The Supreme Court, in a significant reprieve to BCCI and state office-bearers, has allowed them to serve separate nine-year terms at central and state level, permitting a total of 18 years in cricket administration. The clarification on Friday contradicted the Lodha Committee’s interpretation of the court’s order on January 2, when the committee said an office-bearer would be ineligible to continue if he had served nine years in total, whether at BCCI or state level or combined.The confusion over tenure arose after the court modified its January 2 order, which had originally said: “A person shall be disqualified from being an Office-Bearer if he or she has been an Office-Bearer of the BCCI for a cumulative period of 9 years.” On January 3, the court modified that to: “Has been an Office-Bearer of the BCCI or a State Association for a cumulative period of 9 years.”The original Lodha Committee recommendation regarding eligibility, which was passed by the Supreme Court on July 18 last year, had made it possible for an individual to serve nine years each at both BCCI and state level. A BCCI office-bearer’s cooling-off period could have been a three-year term at their state association, after which they could once again contest an election for a BCCI position. And if they won the BCCI post, the ensuing three-year term would serve as their cooling-off period from holding office at state level. An individual could therefore have spent 18 years in Indian cricket administration between the BCCI and his state association.Such a scenario was possible once again after the Supreme Court clarified the uncertainty that arose following the order on January 2 and 3, and reverted the terms of tenure to the original recommendation of the Lodha Committee.The purge of the existing BCCI and state leadership may not be as severe as previously thought•PTI

The Supreme Court also put off finalising the committee of administrators (COA) to supervise the BCCI to January 24. The court had asked amicus curiae Gopal Subramanium and senior legal counsel Anil Divan to nominate people for the COA, which they did by submitting nine names in a sealed envelope on Friday. The court asked the parties not to disclose the names, and pointed out a nine-member panel was “too big”.Upon studying the names, the court asked Subramanium if any of the candidates were over the age of 70, because the Lodha Committee had recommended that BCCI and state office-bearers should be under 70. Subramanium said a few names were over 70 and that the reasons for their inclusion were also listed.On January 2, the court had dismantled the existing power structure of the BCCI by removing the board’s president Anurag Thakur and secretary Ajay Shirke for impeding the implementation of the Lodha Committee’s recommendations. The court said the board would be supervised by a committee of administrators until new office-bearers were elected once the BCCI implemented the recommendations. The court had directed the COA to supervise the administration of the BCCI through its chief executive Rahul Johri.The COA’s other key function was to ensure that the Lodha Committee’s recommendations passed by the court order on July 18, 2016, were implemented by the BCCI and state associations.Last week RM Lodha, the former chief justice of India and chairman of the Lodha Committee, said the COA would issue a fresh set of guidelines for the BCCI and state associations to adopt the new constitution in accordance with the recommendations. “There has to be [fresh timelines], but that will be done by the administrators. We said we don’t have that much of time, and that there has to be layers of administrators,” Lodha said. “The changes will happen. We will be there to supervise and guide the administrators.”The Lodha Committee was formed in January 2015 to determine appropriate punishments for some of the officials involved in the 2013 IPL corruption scandal, and also to propose changes to streamline the BCCI, reform its functioning, prevent sporting fraud and conflict of interest.In January 2016, the committee released its report, which recommended an exhaustive overhaul of the BCCI’s governance and administrative structures. On July 18, the Supreme Court of India approved the majority of the recommendations and directed the Lodha Committee to supervise the BCCI’s implementations of the same. However, despite the Lodha Committee laying out timelines and other directives, the board did not cooperate because it said that its state associations objected to the recommendations. This impasse eventually led to the Supreme Court removing Thakur and Shirke from office on January 2, 2017.