Considered to be one of the best spinners in the world of his time and former India captain Bishan Singh Bedi has written to the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) president Rohan Jaitley and asked to remove his name from the stand in Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium.
Bedi has done this after coming to know of DDCA’s plans of installing a statue of former President and late BJP leader Arun Jaitley at the stadium.
Bedi and Jaitley were often at loggerheads during the latter’s lifetime with the legendary spinner alleging corruption and misappropriation of funds during his tenure at the helm of DDCA.
“After the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium was named hurriedly and most undeservingly after Late Arun Jaitley, my reaction then was maybe somehow good sense might prevail to keep Kotla sacrosanct. How wrong I was. I now gather a statue of Late Arun Jaitley is going to be installed at the Kotla.
I pride myself as a man of immense tolerance and patience but DDCA has truly tested me and forced me to take this drastic action,” Bedi wrote.
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“So Mr. President, I request you to remove my name from the stand that was named after me with immediate effect. I also hereby renounce my DDCA membership… A mere Google search would have helped to know that Late Arun Jaitley’s tenure at DDCA was riddled with corruption. He might have been a good cricket fan too, but his dalliance with cricket administration was dubious and left much to be desired.
This is not a rhetorical assessment but a factual appraisal of his time at DDCA. Take my word, failures don’t need to be celebrated with plaques & busts. They need to be forgotten,” Bedi's letter to DDCA read further.
Bishan Singh Bedi and Mohinder Amarnath were honored in 2017 as DDCA named two stands after the former India and Delhi players.
While stressing that it wasn’t his intention to talk ill of the dead, Bedi said he had to stick to his principles. “I was not raised to carry on a fight to the next generation but then I was also taught, and I firmly believe, to stick to the stand I take,” Bedi wrote.
The former India skipper also had a word of advice for present DDCA president and Arun Jaitley’s son Rohan, writing “These are the ills of nepotism – you get blamed for decisions you weren’t part of and you can’t even give the excuse of absence.”
DDCA president Rohan confirmed to The Indian Express about plans of installing a statue of his father at Kotla.
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“That is something which (Bedi is doing) according to his will. I can’t stop something (him). Right now, there is a proposal in the pipeline (for the statue) that other board members have taken. And whenever there is an appropriate announcement to be made, we will make it. I have not been a signatory to the resolution of this nature because it is a conflict also,” he said.
Bedi also pointed out that it was the statues of great cricketers adorning various cricket grounds across the world.
“It’s WG Grace and not some former president whose statue is at Lord’s. There’s also Sir Garry Sobers at Barbados and Sir Don Bradman at SCG, Shane Warne at MCG. The list is endless. So when kids walk to these stadiums, these majestic statues enhance and enliven the inspiring stories of these past heroes that their elders tell them. Sporting arenas need sporting role models. The place of administrators is only in their glass cabins,” Bedi said.
Therefore not wanting to be a part of DDCA’s wrong culture, as he perceives, Bedi ended his letter saying, “I can’t be part of the stadium that has got its priorities so wrong and where administrators get precedence over the cricketers. Please bring down my name from the stand with immediate effect… I don’t want my legacy to be maligned by my silence or association with this unsporting act.”
(Indian Express inputs)
