TNCA revisited as VCA bans TOI staffers’ entry into stadium

NAGPUR: At a time when the Lodha Commission has made several far-reaching suggestions calling for greater transparency and improving the functioning of cricket in India, the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA) took a retrograde and whimsical step barring the entry of reporters and photographers from The Times of India for cricket matches conducted by it.
The VCA is the home body of current BCCI president and ICC chairman Shashank Manohar.He has also been the VCA president four times.
On Saturday, the guards at the VCA Stadium politely asked sports reporter Ruchir Mishra and photographer Ranjit Deshmukh not to enter the venue where the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 matches were being played. To ensure TOI readers did not miss out on the coverage, both watched the match as regular spectators from the stands.
When Deshmukh started taking photos from the stands, a guard requested him not to do so despite the fact that several spectators were clicking photos using their mobiles. At the end of the Vidarbha innings, VCA member Sunil Ambekar along with a guard requested Mishra and Deshmukh to leave the stands too. TOI could not watch the second half of the match when Himachal Pradesh batted.
The TOI staffers were only told that the instructions had come from top VCA officials. When asked why, VCA president Prakash Dixit directed them to joint secretary Sharad Padhye. After promising to get back, Padhye never returned the call.

(TOI Photo)
VCA's decision to debar TOI came on a day when wicketkeeper Jitesh Sharma (106 off 65 balls) scored a historic first T20 century for Vidarbha. The side also topped Group A and qualified for the Super League stage.
TOI has received no written communication to TOI from the VCA over the ban. However, the paper learnt that the decision is a fallout of a news report that had appeared on the city pages. Unofficially, top officials of the VCA had communicated the ban decision which was taken at its executive committee meeting on Thursday. They did not want to be quoted.
On January 6, TOI, quoting information received under the Right To Information Act (RTI) had reported how the VCA's stadium at Jamtha is an illegal structure as it was constructed without following proper procedures. The reply to the RTI had come from the collector's office.
TOI's reports were not directed towards any particular VCA official, instead it was a pointer to how the city authorities – the Nagpur Municipal Corporation, Nagpur Improvement Trust, Collectorate etc – overlook illegal constructions mushrooming all over the city and the metro region.
It has been learnt that the VCA did not deliberately commit anything illegal during the construction. Its officials were misled by contractors and sub-contractors who looked for shortcuts while building the stadium. Unofficially, VCA also claims that it has all the papers in order to question the information provided by the collectorate, but that has not been shared it with TOI to date.
Following proper editorial practice, the TOI reporter tried contacting the VCA for their version on the stadium being an 'unauthorized structure'. For close to a month, there has been no reply from it.
VCA officials told TOI that the reports were being "deliberately published to malign and tarnish the association's image". They also referred to an earlier report after which the VCA was forced to act and install a fire safety system.
Earlier, in a similar chain of event, the former BCCI president N Srinivasan too had barred TOI reporters from Chennai from covering matches held by the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. However, the TNCA had only disallowed TOI's entry into the press box and did not object to reporters reporting the matches from the stands as spectators.