NEWS
MATCH REPORTS
DIARY
OTHER SPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
PEOPLE
ARCHIVES

He came, he saw, he administered

It was the rest-day of the January 1973 third Test at Chepauk, Madras, between Ajit Wadekar's India and Tony Lewis's England. The English cricketers were gathered at M A Chidambaram's sprawling bungalow, in the evening, for the customary rest-day dinner. But MAC (as we knew Chidambaram) was not his normal composed self, though his suave exterior gave little away.

During that Chepauk Test, MAC, as the local cricket bigwig, had had a run-in with press photographers. Photographers disputing the positions they had come, arbitrarily, to be allotted in what was, ultimately, going to be the Chidambaram stadium!

"I am but a humble servant of the game," said MAC, as the two of us discussed the face-off in which prestige positions had been taken up on both sides. In the course of conversation, I obliquely suggested to MAC that a way out would be to issue a conciliatory statement, through Press Trust of India, as the all-India news agency. MAC said nothing at the time. But next morning you saw, in the papers, a cleverly worded refined appeal by MAC to the press photographers to get back into position to continue the wonderful coverage job they were doing! The statement was a pointer to the antennae-up administrator in MAC.

M A Chidambaram guided the fortunes of the Board of Control for Cricket in India at a time when players were simply told what to do. "Sirring" was a must those days. And MAC, as administrator, was the benevolent dictator. A cricketer had only to go with a problem to him and MAC would lend a most sympathetic ear. By the same token, a cricketer had only to hint at confronting his fondly nursed cricket board, as an institution, and MAC could be ruthless.

Today, when he is gone, you realise MAC's true value to the board -- to cricket-running in India. His son, A C Muthiah, as the current board president, is no less skilled a technocrat. But it is a difficult cricketing legacy Muthiah has inherited from Chidambaram. Today the board does not lack for resources. Yet this was not always so. It was the vision and imagination of M A Chidambaram that put the cricket board on a sound financial footing. As treasurer, MAC valued board money. Maybe he (and others) could have been a little more generous to players. But MAC had an instinctive comprehension of the fact that player power had the potential to pose the greatest hazard, in the long run, to the cricket board's autonomous status.

If asked to name one single achievement of M A Chidambaram, I would say it was his preeminent role in helping to preserve the cricket board's autonomous status. This status gave our cricket board, over the years, a clout unmatched by any other sports body. Geet Sethi got to the essence of the matter when he noted that there was no point in other sports performers being merely envious of the cult status that cricketers in our country commanded. Geet - sailing against the Michael Ferreira wind - pointed out that this was the direct outcome of the game of cricket managing to generate its own resources all along the line, never once turning to the government for folded-hands succour.

If cricket has enjoyed this unique status in our sport, it is because of the strong base on which MAC, with his business acumen, put the board. MAC, it should be remembered, was an authoritarian product of his times. His board faced a particularly tough time during Indira Gandhi's Emergency in mid-1975. MAC, as a sharp business brain, was a realist. He played a rational role, in the extraordinary circumstances that prevailed, in seeing that his board pursued a midway course during those difficult times, while smoothly ensuring that it did not lose its independent authority.

There were those who said that MAC's administering style was "colonial". Maybe there is a grain of truth in it, but the important point is that players were kept under strict vigil and control during MAC's prime time in board administration. For two terms was MAC the board treasurer. And it was during those spans, when television was barely beginning to realise its all-India potential, that MAC ensured a turnover for the board that made it the richest sports body in the country.

It is an oversimplification of the matter to say that the cricket board had little to do here, looking to the crowd following Test matches enjoyed those days. Such value judgment overlooks the fact that the cricket board drew its sap and pith from the fact that it nurtured the game at the grassroots.

Imran Khan, on his visits to this country as Pakistan captain, never ceased to admire India's cricket structure by which a player came up, layer by layer. It was largely the forward-looking outlook of men like MAC that ensured the game would develop, at every single level, in India. MAC was also into table tennis in a big way and his name was almost synonymous with horse-racing in Madras. Yet it would be accurate to say that cricket administration was his passion.

MAC's industrialist son, A C Muthiah, has taken over the reins of the cricket board at a time when the game is crying for a corporate approach, keeping in mind the scale of funds the game is generating today. Staying in power in the corridors of the cricket board is an art in itself. But MAC's feat lay in the fact that he was not one merely to hug the chair by manipulating zonal votes. He contributed to the game as probably no cricket administrator did in the last 50 years. MAC's vim and vitality in overseeing the game derived from the fact that he never, overly, got involved with the technical side. MAC always was one to handpick men for the job, and delegate. The man just set the course and watched, indulgently, as the ringside observer.

Would MAC have been effective today? No -- if only because the game itself has metamorphosed. But in the era in which he was at the helm, MAC was the man for the job. Stadiums are named after all kinds of people in this country. But, in the case of MAC, it could be said, with all cricketing honesty, that the Chidambaram Stadium at Chepauk, Madras, stands as a fitting monument to his contribution to the game as the master administrator. And he accomplished it all without once seeming to push himself to the forefront. MAC worked quietly from behind - and worked effectively for the greater good of the game. Of how many sports administrators in India can you say that?

In all other sports, administrators have almost a vested interest in India's performing below par. For this is the only way they can ensure (from the government) enhanced financial grants for the next Asian Games, or Olympic Games (or whatever), in the name of "big improvement needing big financing to catch up with the years we have lost"! Here was where MAC was different. From the word go, he just did not believe in the cricket board going to the government. He believed that cricket in India had to pay its way. And he ensured that it did. No one in our cricket I knew could make his presence so tellingly felt, from behind the scenes, as M A Chidambaram. He came, he saw, he administered.

MAC the businessman: a tribute by TT Vasu