Unless a change occurs now, it is unlikely that DDCA will ever change, says Kirti Azad

New Delhi, Nov 18 (IANS) After filing his nomination for the President’s post in the upcoming DDCA Elections at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, former India cricketer Kirti Azad said change is the need of the hour and if it doesn’t happen, then it may never occur.

“There is a loot here. Look at the state of the club. Cricket is such a popular sport. Across the country, you see the facilities at the stadium, especially for members. There are exclusive facilities for members, there is a separate entrance.”

“The members don’t need passes, they can enter through membership cards. By giving passes they make you feel as if they are doing a favour. The passes or entry is our right. What kind of favour you are trying to prove you are doing to us? If you had kept two passes along with free entry then we would have said ok this is something special.”

“It is a members’ club. Matches take place here, does that mean members will stop entering? There should be a good bar, an open-air restaurant, a swimming pool, and facilities should be there. I am not even talking about other clubs like Panchsheel Club and Delhi Gymkhana, I am talking about cricket stadiums.”

“There is a loot here. I am very confident that I will win this election. If it doesn’t change now, DDCA never will,” said Azad, also a sitting Trinamool Congress MP, in his speech after filing his nomination on Monday.

Other members from the Azad-led panel who filed their nominations for the DDCA elections on Monday are Sanjay Bhardwaj (Secretary), Gurpreet Sareen (Treasurer), Joginder Khari (Director), Aditya Jain (Director), Nitin Mehra (Director), Sudhir Agarwal (Director), Puneet Khanna (Director), Naveen Jindal (Director) and Kamal Chopra (Director).

The last date for filing nominations is Tuesday, with the vice-president and joint secretary names from the Azad-led panel to be known at that time. Azad also stressed bringing back the glory days of Delhi cricket if he’s elected as the President and took notice of Himmat Singh being removed as the skipper, with Ayush Badoni installed in his place, ahead of the side’s Ranji Trophy round five game against Jharkhand, which recently ended in a first-innings lead for them.

“We were four players from Delhi who won the World Cup in 1983. Mohinder Amarnath, Sunil Valson, Madan Lal, and I. We were captains, and that glory should return. A player like Himmat Singh is India material. He is thrown out of the team, he is recalled, made captain, and removed. This is not right.”

“If you play a sifarishi (recommendation) player, and your team loses, you sack the captain but what happens to the selection committee and CAC who picked this team in which sifarishi are playing, directors’ quota are playing? Naming them here won’t be appropriate,” said Kirti Azad.

“They have so much talent that they picked 84 players and out of them 34 end up playing. They have won only one match. These players are the directors’ choices, just see how talented they are. They haven’t won for 16 years. Who will answer that? This is the DDCA.”

“They make their boys play to ensure some benefit to him like he’ll get a job if he is a first-class cricketer. They think we’ll make him a coach or a manager as he qualifies after playing a number of games. That is why the situation has become so bad. There is massive corruption here, people take money and pick players. Someone from the top office takes money.”

Azad also vowed to bring professionalism into DDCA’s workings in administration and on-field things if elected to power on December 16, once voting happens from December 13-15. “The club will be run professionally. We will work properly, and manage accounts professionally. There is no CEO here at the moment. There is an interim CEO who is an employee of DDCA. They have kept him like this for three years.”

“BCCI has mandated that the association should have a full-time CEO and they should have a person from CAG for accounts. Nothing is there, why? Why has the treasurer not signed any paper till now? Why hasn’t the treasurer signed a balance sheet?”

“That is why I say there is corruption, everything is Golmaal. The secretary has been removed, he hasn’t signed. Who has signed? The joint secretary has signed. There should be improvement in club, cricket, professionals should be hired, CEO should be professional,” he said.

“Accounts should be maintained by a CAG appointee. All this is written but nothing is there on the ground. Eight lifts are being installed for Rs 19 crore, and I have found out that they are worth Rs 7.88 crore. The lights that were installed for Rs 14 crore a few years ago, they have been installed in Ahmedabad six months ago for Rs 7.5 crore. Ahmedabad is 2.5 times bigger than this.”

Azad, who scored 4867 runs and took 162 wickets as an all-rounder for Delhi in 95 Ranji matches, signed off by remembering the words of legendary left-arm spinner Bishan Singh Bedi on entering the Delhi cricket ecosystem.

“When I entered DDCA and Delhi cricket, Sardar Bishan Singh Bedi asked us to fight. He had said that there is no cricket culture here and that cricket culture will come only when you start winning. ‘Until you beat a team like Mumbai, you can’t do much. Fight and die,’ Bedi had said. From 1978-79 till 1991-92, we kept winning Ranji Trophy titles one after the other.”

–IANS

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