Thakur: 'It isn't easy to change the Board's structure in one go'

Ahead of the Supreme Court's verdict on BCCI's response to the Lodha recommendations, the Board president Anurag Thakur said "it will take some time" to change the Board's setup.

Anurag Thakur refused to answer whether the BCCI was willing to put its stand in writing to the apex court.

Ahead of Monday's Supreme Court judgement on the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) response to the Justice Lodha panel recommendations, president Anurag Thakur indicated that the Board might pare its opposition and be open to working out an agreeable formula in the matter.

Insisting that it isn't easy to transform the existing structure of the Board at one go, Thakur said he wasn't stubborn on disobeying the court order.

“It's not just the BCCI office bearers. You cannot simply do away with the entire management and the existing set up at one go. There are the state associations and then the zones, the districts, the clubs. Some states have more that 4,000 members. It has to go all the way down to that level and all this takes time. We will file our response to the court tomorrow,” Thakur said on the sidelines of the first India-New Zealand ODI here.

The Supreme Court asked Thakur to file a personal affidavit on Monday stating whether he wrote to International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman David Richardson, asking ICC to take a stand that the Lodha Committee recommendations would amount to government interference in the affairs of the BCCI.

He refused to answer whether the BCCI was willing to put its stand in writing to the apex court. The court has already said that the recommendations must be implemented unconditionally and the BCCI could sit down with the panel to discuss any issues it had.

But the Board, reportedly, has decided against any large-scale changes to the existing set-up in Saturday's Special General Meeting (SGM) in Delhi. It remains to be seen what the Board's final response would be.

Taking a dig at the latest Supreme Court order that mandated a requisition to the Lodha panel for any BCCI decision, Thakur said that the Board would announce Rs 1 crore for the Indian team as appreciation for becoming No. 1 in Tests, “provided the court approves of it."

"I hope it will not be turned down," he added.

Thakur also reiterated that the BCCI was never opposed to the Decision Review System (DRS) but had always wanted it to be 100 per cent accurate and reliable before accepting its use. ICC general manager Geoff Allardice is likely to make a presentation on the same to the BCCI on October 20 – coinciding with the second ODI against New Zealand -- in Delhi.