Cricket has become a mainstay of India’s sports culture, particularly after the Indian Men’s Cricket Team brought home its first World Cup in 1983. Yet Indian cricket has also been rocked by numerous embarrassing corruption scandals, many involving match-fixing and illegal betting (see, for example, here and here). These scandals have also prompted questions about more pervasive corruption, cronyism, and conflict of interest in the sport’s governing bodies, particularly the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). It has proven especially difficult to root out these problems because the BCCI is considered a private organization, and is therefore not covered by India’s Prevention of Corruption Act (PoCA) and Right to Information (RTI) Act. Notably, this is something of an anomaly: Most other sports authorities in India are “National Sports Federations,” autonomous bodies that are considered public bodies for legal purposes. Yet the BCCI has so far successfully resisted being similarly classified, on the grounds that, unlike these other sports authorities, it does not receive direct financial support from the state.

This should change, on grounds of both law and policy. As a legal matter, the BCCI meets the criteria for classification as a public body. As a policy matter, subjecting the BCCI to the PoCA, RTI Act, and other Indian anticorruption and pro-transparency laws would go a long way to cleaning up the corruption mess in Indian cricket. Continue reading →