Roy award gaffe leaves BCCI on sticky wicket

MUMBAI: The BCCI’s Col CK Nayudu lifetime achievement awards are getting unnecessarily mired in controversy this year.
On Saturday, within hours of being conferred the award, former India women’s cricket captain Diana Edulji turned it down as she’s still a part of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA). Apart from Edulji and Sudha Shah, the Board’s three-member committee, comprising CK Khanna (acting president), Amitabh Choudhary (acting secretary) and N Ram (eminent journalist) had also recommended former India batsman and two-time national coach Anshuman Gaekwad and former opener, the late Pankaj Roy, for the prestigious award.
However, in a case of a clear gaffe on the part of the panel, which could leave the Board red-faced, it has now emerged that the BCCI has given lifetime achievement awards, which carry a handsome purse of Rs 25 lakhs, besides citation and a trophy, to the cricketers only when they’re alive. Roy expired in 2001. As a policy which has been in place, the Board doesn’t give the award to cricket greats posthumously.
Lala Amarnath, who died in 2000, was the first recipient of this award, back in 1994, while the last to get them were left-arm spinners Rajinder Goel and Padmakar Shivalkar. “This is clear case of oversight. Are you trying to tell me that greats like Vinoo Mankad and Vijay Merchant, who never received the award because it isn’t given posthumously, didn’t deserve it ahead of Roy?,” fumed a BCCI official.
The mistake has left the Board in a fix because it would now be hugely embarrassing, and insulting to Roy’s family, if the award announced for him is ‘withdrawn.’ “We’ve been apprised of the issue. We’ll look into it and I’ll discuss with my colleagues on this subject,” Khanna told TOI.
The committee has recommended Abbas Ali Baig, late Naren Tamhane and late Budhi Kunderan for the BCCI Special Award. The awards will take place in Bangalore in the first week of June during the one-off Test between India and Afghanistan.
Previous award winners
1994: Lala Amarnath; 1995: Syed Mushtaq Ali 1996: Capt. Vijay Hazare; 1997: KN Prabhu 1998: P Umrigar; 1999: Col Hemchandra Adhikari 2000: Subhash Gupte; 2001: Mansur Ali Khan Patuadi 2002: Bhausaheb Nimbalka; 2003: Chandrakant Borde; 2004: BS Bedi, B Chandrasekhar, EAS Prasanna, S Venkatraghavan; 2007: Nariman Contractor; 2008: GR Vishwanath; 2009: Mohinder Amarnath; 2010: Salim Durani; 2011: Ajit Wadekar; 2012: Sunil Gavaskar; 2013: Kapil Dev; 2014: Dilip Vengsarkar 2015: Syed M H Kirmani; 2016: Rajinder Goel and Padmakar Shivalkar.