Board begins by hitting players where it hurts the most: pocket

At the end of two days of deliberations over the debacle at the World Cup, India’s cricket bosses today came up with a set of decisions that targets its players and curtails their endorsement contracts.

At the end of two days of deliberations over the debacle at the World Cup, India’s cricket bosses today came up with a set of decisions that targets its players and curtails their endorsement contracts.

Hitting back hard at the players, who had been holding the upper hand in this see-saw power game till the team started losing, the BCCI scrapped their graded system of assured payments, asked the selection committee to select a “young team” for the Bangladesh tour next month, and issued notices to Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh for their reported outbursts in the media.

By implementing a performance-based payment system, and clamping down on players’ endorsements (see box), the Board also signalled that it was high time the team and the players followed a code of contract conduct. The Board had virtually been forced by the players to implement the graded system nearly three years ago.

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However, the players, who had the Board eating out of their hands when the going was good, would disagree though, with two of them telling this newspaper that all it needed was that one great stretch of wins for the equation to change again.

But for now, it’s the BCCI all the way —so much so that stalwarts like Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly may find themselves out of the team for the Bangladesh series. The Ravi Shastri experiment was made official today, with the BCCI adding that the former captain will be assisted by Venkatesh Prasad as bowling coach and Robin Singh, as fielding coach.