Who will deliver the Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi Memorial Lecture? The choice has been a bone of contention between BCCI acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary and the board officials. Things, however, seems to have come to a head after he strongly objected to the board's choice of former English cricketer Kevin Pietersen as the speaker at the MAK Pataudi lecture in Bengaluru on June 12.
Four names—Sourav Ganguly, Kumar Sangakkara and Nasser Hussain being the others—were considered. Reportedly, after former Sri Lanka captain Sangakkara expressed his unavailability to speak at the event “due to his commentary commitments”, Saba Karim, general manager, cricket operations, sent out an email dated May 14 to all concerned in the BCCI and the CoA informing that Kevin Pietersen had agreed and confirmed to deliver the MAK Pataudi lecture.
However, Choudhary objected to it. In a stinging email sent to CoA chairman Vinod Rai and member Diana Edulji, other BCCI office-bearers, including CEO Rahul Johri and Karim, Choudhary said, “I had mentioned in our last meeting on May 8, names of some living Indian stalwarts who could also be considered.” He had proposed the names of Abbas Ali Baig and Erapalli Prasanna for the lecture as “cricketers who had the distinction of playing alongside Tiger”.
“This last email by GM (cricket operations) and expression of happiness over it has left me wondering whether the memorial lecture was indeed MAK Pataudi Lecture or Sir Len Hutton Lecture or for that matter Sir Frank Woolley Lecture,” Choudhary wrote.
The three topics that were shortlisted for the lecture were: peace and sustainability through cricket, behaviour and conduct of international players, and cricket as an Olympic sport.
The lecture is scheduled to take place ahead of the historic Test match between Afghanistan and India at Bengaluru.
The BCCI officials reiterated that international players were invited to broaden the reach of the MAK Pataudi lecture. “We want our lecture to be at same level as Sir Colin Cowdrey Lecture or Sir Don Bradman lecture. People must realise that this lecture is not 'in memory' of the late Tiger Pataudi but is a memorial lecture which talks about issues, concerns related to the sport overall.” The officials gave the example of contemporary great Rahul Dravid delivering the lecture recently, touching upon the issues concerning cricket.
Choudhary even questioned Karim on how the list of four was arrived at. He also raised following objections: “While foreigners are welcome to add value to this lecture why was this list overweighted in favour of foreigners? What was their relevance to the Pataudi Lecture? Since the chairman (of COA) had authorised only exploring the possibility of Sangakkara's availability and on basis of which authorisation was the jump made to Pietersen's name?”
When asked specifically whether Sourav Ganguly was pursued, the officials said that he was presently an administrator—Ganguly is the president of Cricket Association of Bengal—and so, they wanted to avoid the possibility of some board members raising this issue as was the case last year.
It may be noted that Rai, while giving his consent to Sangakkara's name, had also mentioned in his email that “CoA was open to any names being suggested as these are not issues on which evolving a consensus should be a problem”.
The consensus, as is evident now, was a problem. The BCCI old guard is not happy. It may be noted that treasurer Anirudh Chaudhry had given his consent to Sourav Ganguly and Pietersen's names in his response.
BCCI officials also clarified that they had considered inviting past Indian greats like Baig or Prasanna but there was a concern that they would be unable to speak continuously for 45 minutes due to age and health issues.
Also, last year's lecture by former Indian wicketkeeper-batsman Farokh Engineer was criticised for being disjointed and not impactful enough.