Remembering the recently-deceased former BCCI president, who once said, “The media makes cricket so great. You have to reach them. They shouldn’t reach you”
The late Inderjit Singh Bindra was a dynamic BCCI administrator. Pic/mid-day archives
In an age where communication between the Indian cricket body and the media has become increasingly important, there is in fact far less interaction as compared to earlier eras when the cricket canvas was not as wide and colourful.
How many times has current BCCI chief Mithun Manhas placed himself in front of the media? Ditto Roger Binny, his predecessor. These, I’m sure, are not always individual choices, but reflect the approach of the Board who are uncomfortable in revealing what lies behind their decorated cloak.
Former BCCI president Inderjit Singh Bindra, who passed away in New Delhi on Sunday at the age of 84, was one BCCI functionary who truly believed that the media is an important arm of the game.
Bindra, along with NKP Salve and Jagmohan Dalmiya, were the all-time greats of Indian cricket administration because they proved to the world that India are as capable, if not better, of hosting big-ticket events. Imran Khan was not one to dish out plaudits easily, but he had no hesitation in saying that the 1987 World Cup co-hosted by India and Pakistan was the best organised of all World Cups he was part of.
I’m not sure how many points Salve scored when it came to dealing with the fourth estate, but Bindra scored over Dalmiya by a mile. And Raj Singh Dungarpur, who succeeded Bindra in 1996, was very approachable as well.
Bindra was known to encourage players to interact with the media. I heard a story about how one pressman was tired of chasing a player for an interview. He then decided to take it up with Bindra, then the Board president. Bindra asked the evasive player whether he had good reason for not granting the journalist the interview. When the response was lame, he ordered him to oblige the journalist. Being a media-supporting president didn’t mean Bindra was not liked by the players. “A great administrator of the game whose influence I witnessed from a very young age,” wrote Yuvraj Singh on X.
I remember seeing Ravi Shastri leave the PCA Stadium at the end of his commentary work for the 1999 India vs NZ Test. He had almost stepped out of the lounge when he turned back to bid goodbye to Bindra. His walking back, probably to thank him, also displayed reverence.
Bindra was known to utter “shoot” when approached by a journalist for a comment on an issue. It happened to me when I spoke to him for the first time, seeking a comment from him as a past president of the BCCI on the pitch vandalism of the Kotla in 1999. In a 2004 interview, he told me: “The media makes cricket so great. You have to reach them. They shouldn’t reach you.”
The world knows he played a key role in building the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium in Mohali. A full house there for a day-night fixture was a sight for the gods — just like the Eden Gardens in Kolkata, where his friend-turned-foe Dalmiya called the shots. But what Bindra offered the media was far more appreciated. In the 1990s, the media box at Mohali was not the most spacious and comfortable. But the pavilion end, where the media were housed, was immaculate; the housekeeping all over personally supervised by Bindra’s efficient wife Kamal.
Veteran journalist Pradeep Magazine, who began his career in Chandigarh, told me on Wednesday that Bindra treated journalists as special people. He threw parties for them with the finest liquor flowing. “Sure, he knew the importance of PR, but he was a pathbreaker in the sense that he realised how important the media was to the commercial value of cricket in India.
Remember, he played a role in getting the 1987 and 1996 World Cups to India. He even had good relations with the overseas press and got journalists on his side, unlike Dalmiya,” said Magazine, who knew Bindra even before he entered the inner ring of the BCCI, as president of the Punjab Cricket Association.
Mike Coward, the celebrated Australian writer, recalled from Sydney on Wednesday how Bindra (as BCCI president) made the travelling media contingent comfortable during the 1996 World Cup. “Bindra was also a prominent BCCI figure in an important phase in India-Australia cricket — the 1986 Tied Test and the 1987 World Cup,” said Coward, who post those two events, wrote a book called Cricket Beyond the Bazaar.
If Bindra was keen on attending to the needs of the media, he was primarily hell-bent on seeing that spectators were not short-changed. In the same 2004 interview, he told me: “Money [earned by the BCCI] is not being misused, but more funds should be used into channels like improving public amenities — toilets, catering, drinking water, etc. Why haven’t we analysed as to why so many matches get abandoned due to poor crowd behaviour. People stand for six hours to enter the stadium. They can’t go out to even get a bottle of water because they will lose their seat. We have a tremendous public, but we can’t treat them like sardines.”
One of the more famous Bindra utterances, according to Magazine, was made in the wake of what he perceived as unfair treatment to the Amarnath brothers, Mohinder and Surinder. Bindra challenged those who were giving the siblings the rough end of the selectorial stick by calling for a match that pitted the rest of India against players from the North.
Maybe the BCCI should think of organising this match and calling it the IS Bindra Trophy — in honour of a man who brought in dynamism, among other things, to India’s cricketing ecosystem.
mid-day’s Deputy Editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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