After criticizing the DDCA for deciding to install a statue of its late former president Arun Jaitley on the grounds of Feroz Shah Kotla, spinning legend Bishan Singh Bedi asked the body to remove his name from the spectators’ stand, which bears his name. in 2017.
Attacking the culture of the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA), which he says promotes nepotism and puts “administrators ahead of cricketers,” Bedi also resigned his membership in the body.
He made the demand in a scathing letter addressed to DDCA president Rohan Jaitley, son of the late politician, who was a minister in the BJP-led NDA government and died last year due to multiple health problems.
“I pride myself on being a man of immense tolerance and patience… but all I fear is that it is running out. The DDCA has really tested me and forced me to take this drastic action.
“So, Mr. President, I ask that you remove my name from the booth that bears my name with immediate effect. Furthermore, I hereby resign from my DDCA membership, ”Bedi wrote in his letter.
Jaitley was president of the DDCA for 14 years, from 1999 to 2013, before leaving the cricket administration. The corps plans to have a six-foot statue of him installed in the Kotla to honor his memory. DDCA had named one of the stands after Bedi in November 2017 together with Mohinder Amarnath.
“I have made this decision with sufficient deliberation. I am not prone to ignore the honor that was bestowed on me. But as we all know, with honor comes responsibility. They complimented me on the total respect and integrity with which I played the game.
“And now I return the honor to you just to assure you all that, four decades after my retirement, I still have those values. Putting his decision in context, Bedi wrote that he was never a fan of Arun Jaitley’s style of work and always opposed any decision he disagreed with.
“My reservations about the choice of people you chose to run the day-to-day affairs of the DDCA are well known. I remember leaving a meeting at his residence where he was unable to get rid of a noisy item using terribly rude language.
“I think his head was too strong … too old-school … and an Indian cricketer too proud to be co-opted into the corrupt darbar of sycophants that Arun Jaitley gathered in Kotla during his administration.”
Bedi said it pains him that even the current leadership follows the culture of “flattering reverence.”
“After the Feroze Shah Kotla was hastily and in the most undeserved manner named by the late Arun Jaitley, my reaction was perhaps somehow that good sense prevailed to keep Kotla sacrosanct.
“How wrong I was. I now understand that a statue of the late Arun Jaitley will be installed in the Kotla. I’m not entirely in love with the idea of a statue of Arun Jaitley in Kotla. ”
Bedi said that since the late administrator was primarily a politician, it is Parliament that needs to “remember him for posterity.”
“This is not a rhetorical evaluation but an objective evaluation of your time at DDCA. Believe me, failures don’t need to be celebrated with plaques and busts. They need to be forgotten. ”
Citing examples of how great cricketers were honored in other countries, Bedi said: “The people around you today will never inform you that it is WG Grace at Lord’s … Sir Jack Hobbs at the Oval …. Sir Garfield Sobers in Barbados and freshman Shane Warne at MCG … who grace their cricket stadiums with the Spirit of Cricket never out of place.
“… Sports stadiums need sports models. The administrators’ place is in their glass cabinets.
“Since the DDCA doesn’t understand this universal cricket culture, I need to get out of it. I can’t be part of a stadium that has its priorities so terribly wrong and where the administrators take priority over the cricketers. Please take my name off the stand with immediate effect. “
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