The "Pawar" factor

The world continues to amaze us all or rather I should say the administrators continue to amaze us all. Year after year we keep coming across events which catch everybody's attention due to all the wrong reasons The recent rejection of candidature of John Howard for the post of the president of the international cricket council was one such event.


John Howard, ex Prime Minister of Australia has been a cricket buff for some time now. He has, although ,never been into cricket either as a player or as an administrator at any moment of time. But this didn't stop him for expressing his desire to run for the post of ICC head and neither did it stop the cricket boards of Australia and New Zealand from backing him up. this is nothing new as far as sports is concerned. Non Sportsmen have been at the helm of affairs of affairs in almost all countries at some or the other time. It is as if sports ceases to be a sport and becomes a extended territory of politics, free for all. Industrialists, politicians, administrators, all are welcome !

But what was worth noticing was the reason ICC gave in its defence of rejecting the candidature. According to ICC previous experience either as a player or as an administrator was essential for running for the post. Now if a book containing the most ludicrous of arguments of all time is prepared this argument would surely find its place somewhere at the top of the list !
Consider the present ICC president: Mr Sharad Pawar.
He is the Union Minister of Agriculture and also the Union Minster of Consumer affairs, Food and Public Distribution in the Indian Government.He is the leader of the Nationalist Congress Party. He has also served as the head of various sports organisations such as kho kho, kabaddi, wrestling and off course cricket. There are other stories also about him in various other fields.
Now either he is bestowed with some supernatural powers or there is something else. Either he considers his job as the Union Minister as a part time job or he considers the post if ICC head as one to be taken up during leisure time. How he will manage time for cricket and ICC is for us to see ( I differentiate between the ICC and Cricket because ICC apparently seems to more interested with money than with cricket at present.)

Playing sport with sports has been the favourite hobby of our politicians for many years. This is one fundamental reason for the functioning ( or malfunctioning) of the sports bodies in India and the general state of affairs of Sports in India. No stage seems small for our politicians.
At a time when sugar crisis is at its peak in India and when news of food shortages keep coming in the media we have a Mr Pawar rubbishing these reports firstly. Then he follows it up with random statements about imports when it is a knowledge of public domain that problem lies with the distribution, laundering and not the production of sugar. We need to keep in mind that these statements were made prior to him taking up the ICC head post. So now that he has took over as ICC head we must be prepared to hear more of such in the near future.

Since India virtually controls the cricket today, no one dare say anything about it. Welcome to the Indian era.

Money is power and power is Pawar !