Rift in India's National Cricket Academy out in the open

The growing rift among the Board members of National Cricket Academy (NCA) came out in the open on Monday with a key functionary questioning the "restructuring policy" as well as the working procedure at the academy.

Biswarup Dey, who is one of the members of the NCA Board, has openly questioned the "lackadaisical attitude" of the committee members at a time when NCA's working policy is set to be entirely revamped.

- 'Can you imagine the BCCI has ANY credibility?'

"The NCA has been the pride of Indian cricket but the way it is being run at the present moment is very disappointing. No one has any clue about how restructuring is being done. There was suppose to be a meeting of the NCA board in June and we are now at the end of July, but I haven't heard of anything
yet," an upset Dey, who is the treasurer of Cricket Association of Bengal, said.

Dey also questioned as to what BCCI's Game Development Manager Ratnakar Shetty is doing as he was entrusted with the duty of setting up the module for restructuring.

"Shetty was supposed to come back to us with an exhaustive module. But this hasn't happened. I would like to know that how are the vacancies that have been created after a few got pink-slips would be filled? It's been quite some time now. If it is delayed further, it will only hurt NCA's progress," Dey added.

When Shetty was asked about the meeting in June being deferred, he said, "The chairman of the NCA Board (Ranjib Biswal) was in England with the Indian team and that's why the meeting couldn't be slotted. But restructuring is going on and we will soon announce the date of the meeting."

Dey is not ready to buy the argument that Biswal's absence is the reason for the delay.

"The NCA specifically has a post called vice-chairman (Sunil Dev) who is authorized to conduct the meeting in the chairman's absence. Was Mr Sunil Dev ever contacted and told to preside over the meeting?" Dey questioned.

"I am not counting myself out but none of us in the last one year have ever visited the NCA in the capacity of committee members to keep a tab on the proceedings. I put this on record," Dey said.

Apart from Dey, Biswal and Dev, the other members are Kashi Viswanathan, Rakesh Parikh, Gyanendra Pandey, Chetan Desai and Bikash Baruah.

The BCCI recently named an 'above-19' camp at the NCA for players who are finding it difficult to bridge the gap between colts and first-class cricket. However the camp has served little purpose once the India Emerging Side (U-23) for Singapore based tournament was named.

"When these boys came, they were told that they might get a chance to play for India U-23 in Singapore. Within three days of the start of the camp, BCCI named an U-23 side and from this camp, only one boy (Akshar Patel) has made it. The coaches are finding it difficult to motivate the remaining players," a BCCI official said.

There are also issues about the huge difference in payments between the visiting faculty for the camp (Sanjay Bangar, Deep Dasgupta and Sunil Joshi) and specialist coaches (Paras Mhambrey and Narendra Hirwani).

When a BCCI official was asked this question, he replied, "I don't know why Hirwani and Mhambrey has been dubbed as specialist coaches while Bangar, Dasgupta and Joshi are being clubbed in the visiting faculty category."