The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is continuing to cut costs this year as a media report claims that it will now offer business class travel on domestic flights to only the Chief Selectors of the Senior and Junior national teams. The report has been carried by The Indian Express.
Earlier, the BCCI had also cut down the cash-prize to the winning franchise of the Indian Premier League (IPL) by almost 50 per cent.
The report further claims that even the BCCI general managers will have to fly economy class with the country as per the new regulations.
However, the new directives have been set for a flight below the duration of the seven hours. This implies that flights that are longer than seven hours will see no change and all selectors can avail the business class facilities available to them.
In effect, only Sunil Joshi and Ashish Kapoor, the chairmen of the senior and junior selection committees respectively, would continue to be eligible for the business class on all the BCCI sponsored trips.
While Joshi heads the men’s senior selection committee comprising of Sarandeep Singh, Harvinder Singh, Devang Gandhi and Jatin Paranjpe, whereas Kapoor is the head of the junior selection committee comprising of Debashish Mohanty, Amit Sharma, Gyanendra Pandey and Rakesh Parikh.
It is worth highlighting that till 2013 all the selectors travelled economy class and the rule was changed since a few selectors felt inferior seeing the players in the same flight travelling via business class.
“It didn’t look nice as we saw them seated in business class and we walk past them towards our seats in economy class. We had requested BCCI then and they had agreed for selectors also to travel business class,” a former selector was quoted as saying in The Indian Express.
But the Sourav Ganguly led BCCI believes that the Board will end up saving a lot of money if they reduce the number of business class travels.
As far as the women’s selection committee is concerned, the Indian cricket governing body has not yet appointed a new board after the previous committee’s tenure ended recently.