New BCCI chief Roger Binny brings dignity, experience, expertise to the job

It should come as no surprise to those who know the man that Roger Binny’s first statements in the immediacy of taking charge as the 36th president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) should revolve around injuries to players and the pressing need to revisit the quality of pitches in domestic cricket.

On Tuesday afternoon, the 67-year-old became the third international cricketer, after the Maharaja of Vizianagaram and Sourav Ganguly, to climb to the helm of affairs in the BCCI. True, Shivlal Yadav and Sunil Gavaskar briefly held that position in 2014, but they were appointed by the Supreme Court and barely spent time in office.

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Despite having served first as vice-president and then president of the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA), Binny is a cricketer first and an administrator next. In his capacity as the BCCI chief, it’s unlikely that cricket will occupy anything other than top place in his list of priorities, as evidenced by his comments during an informal chat with the media upon succeeding Ganguly at the head of affairs.

Capable of taking tough decisions

Binny is a highly decorated if hardly commensurately celebrated cricketer. Given his penchant for keeping a low profile, it can be said with conviction that he hasn’t got his due, considering the successes he enjoyed with the national team at the 1983 World Cup and in the 1985 World Championship of Cricket. In both tournaments, he played lead roles with the ball, thriving on swing in England to finish as the highest wicket-taker in 1983 and invariably making early inroads two years later in Australia when unbeaten India climbed the summit in the prestigious 50-over bash.

A stellar performer at the domestic level who once held the record for the highest opening-wicket partnership in first-class cricket, 451 with Sanjay Desai, Binny was a tigerish performer on the cricket field. For Karnataka, he opened the batting and the bowling, led the team with distinction, took young charges such as Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath under his wing and gave them the space, confidence and license to express themselves and grow as individuals and cricketers.

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Once he was done with his playing career, mainly for Karnataka and for a brief while in the autumn of his career for Goa, he turned to coaching. Besides coaching the Karnataka and Bengal senior sides, he was instrumental in Mohammad Kaif’s team clinching the Under-19 World Cup in Sri Lanka in 2000. Two stints as vice-president of the KSCA, the second of them cut short in 2011 when he was named a senior national selector, meant he was ideally positioned to return as president of his home state association in 2019, at a time when the Karnataka Premier League was rocked by allegations of match-fixing, among other things.

Binny’s astute and impartial handling of a major crisis won him plaudits, and his steady, unwavering hand at the wheel steered the somewhat rocky ship adeptly out of choppy waters. For someone who has the image of a ‘softie’, Binny has shown that he is capable of taking tough decisions, as evidenced by his cracking of the whip in his final few months as KSCA president when he sought greater accountability from coaches and selectors with Karnataka’s cricketing stocks dwindling across age-groups.

Clean up Ganguly’s mess

To many, Binny is a left field choice as BCCI head honcho, and while it’s true that he wasn’t touted as being in contention until a little over a month back, few cricketers are better qualified to occupy that position. It might be an exaggeration to state that Binny is faced with the onerous task of cleaning up Ganguly’s mess, though the general impression prevails that Ganguly didn’t do as much to elevate the image of Brand BCCI as he did for Brand Sourav.

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Ganguly’s ascension to the presidentship was greeted with generous optimism and the belief that as a cricketer himself, he would address the concerns of the playing fraternity. In his first few days, the man with the penchant for being in the news made all the right noises, promising to increase the remuneration for first-class cricketers and work to raise the profile of women’s cricket. As subsequent events have revealed, those have largely remained empty promises. Ganguly’s brazen propensity to be in the news, and sometimes be the news, didn’t cut ice with the old guard in the BCCI, some of whom looked at him as perhaps the most self-centred of all Board bosses.

A simple man with simple tastes

Binny will not attract such negativity. Self-assured and content to stay in the background, Binny loves his space and privacy and will not be shooting his mouth off, nor get drawn into a slanging match with the national captain like Ganguly did with Virat Kohli. He is most at peace in his Bandipur home, surrounded by the woods and the trees, by his wife and his four dogs. But now that he has plunged into BCCI administration, he won’t look at his three-year tenure as a ceremonial one of formality, even if much of the power is vested in the Board secretary which, now, is Jay Shah.

A simple man with simple tastes, Binny showcased his integrity and sense of fairness when, as national selector, he would step away from meetings where his son Stuart’s name came up for consideration. It is one of those remarkable ironies that a man with the greatest standing had to step down as national selector in 2015 in a perceived conflict of interest merely because his son was good enough to be discussed at selection meetings. That he is now back as the BCCI top boss must be seen as the coming of the full circle of the cricketing wheel.

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Apart from addressing frequent injury woes to cricketers and the pitches, Binny’s immediate priority will be to ensure that the Women’s IPL, due to kick off in March, is off to the kind of start that will make it self-sustainable and offer more women cricketers in the country the opportunity to grow and evolve. He brings dignity, poise, experience and expertise to the job; for that alone, those who zeroed in on him and managed to convince him to agree to become the BCCI president deserve a pat on the back.

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