NEW DELHI: Lambasting the DDCA for deciding to install a statue of their late former president Arun jaitley at Fierce Shah Kotla soil, spin legend Bishan Singh Bedi has asked the body to remove his name from the spectator stands, which bears his name in 2017.
Attacking Delhi and the district Cricket The culture of the Association (DDCA), which, according to him, 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 that I fear is running out. The DDCA has really put me to the test and forced me to take this drastic action.
“Then, Mr. President, I ask that you remove my name from the booth bearing my name with immediate effect. Furthermore, I hereby resign my membership in the DDCA,” 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 enough deliberation. I am not prone to ignore the honor that was bestowed on me. But as we all know, honor comes with responsibility. I was congratulated on the full respect and integrity with which I played the game.
“And now I return the honor to you just to assure everyone that four decades after my retirement, I still hold onto those values.”
Putting his decision in context, Bedi wrote that he was never a fan of Arun Jaitley’s style of work and was always opposed to any decision that he disagreed with.
“My reservations about the choice of the people he chose to run the day-to-day affairs of the DDCA are well known. I remember leaving a meeting at his residence from which he was unable to dismiss a noisy element by using terribly foul language.
“I think he was too strong in the head … too old school … and too proud an Indian cricketer to be co-opted into the corrupt darbar of sycophants that Arun Jaitley gathered at the 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 most undeservedly named by the late Arun Jaitley, my reaction was perhaps somehow that good sense prevails to keep Kotla sacrosanct.
“How wrong I was. Now I understand that a statue of the late Arun Jaitley is going to be installed in the Kotla. I am 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 need not be celebrated with plaques and busts. They should 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 Donald Bradman at SCG… .Sir Garfield Sobers in Barbados and fresh-cut Shane Warne at MCG… who adorn their cricket stadiums with the Spirit of Cricket never out of place.
“… Sports stadiums need sports models. Administrators’ place is in their glass booths.
“Since the DDCA doesn’t understand this universal cricket culture, I have to get out of it. I can’t be part of a stadium that has its priorities so terribly wrong and where administrators take priority over cricket players. Please lower my name of the stand with immediate effect “.
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