A war of words has broken out between Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) president Sourav Ganguly and the state association ombudsman Ushanath Banerjee over a potential conflict of interest related to two members of the Bengal selection committees – Palash Nandy and Madan Ghosh.
CAB recently revamped its selection committees, appointing Nandy as the chairman of the senior selection committee, while Ghosh became the junior selection panel chief. Banerjee received an anonymous letter following the appointments, alleging potential conflict of interest, as the missive to the ombudsman claimed that the two selectors have their private cricket coaching centres, while one of them, Ghosh, is also a member of a CAB sub-committee. As per the BCCI conflict-of-interest guidelines, any person attached to private coaching centres cannot be part of any selection committee at state, zonal and/or national level.
The ombudsman sought the CAB president’s response in this regard to which Ganguly wrote: “You must have noticed that the letter doesn’t have any name or any signature of the sender and hence the intent of sending this communication is difficult to understand. I feel going forward as a Standard Operating Process, your esteemed self being appointed as an official ombudsman of the Association should not entertain such letters, which as per me is written with notorious intent rather than actual awareness of the facts.”
Ganguly added that the CAB “will not entertain any such anonymous communication” and advised Banerjee to do the same. The former India captain stressed that the CAB “maintain all rules and regulations” as per the state association’s constitution. He also spoke about the Supreme Court finalising the new BCCI and state associations’ constitution and that the CAB would act accordingly.
