Good Morning everybody. Thanks
to my dear friend Aravinda De Silva, a great cricket legend of all times for
joining us in spite of his very busy schedule and prior commitments, my
colleague at the bar, Kuvera De Zoysa, President Counsel and a great civil,
commercial and sports lawyer, my colleague Muddasir Hossain from Bangla Desh a
member of CLA, Christopher Johnston from Brisbane, Australia, Justice Asad
Munir, Judge High Court of Lahore, lawyer cricketers, captains, coaches, team managers,
colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen.
Aravinda De Silva needs no preparation
to play, he has it in his DNA. He can hit his shots even at short notice, as soon
as he is on the ground. I was always envious of sports persons because they play
and I as lawyer only practice. But today to my heart’s content I am in
midst of lawyers who do both, practice and play. The credit of all this goes to
one man amongst us, R. Santhanakrishnan, former President of CLA and a very
dear colleague of mine. He is a legend organizer, having great passion and life
mission of creating human chain and making lawyers come together using cricket and
commonwealth lawyers’ association as the binding force of friendship.
When the first man threw the
first stone at the tree to get a fruit and to shoo an animal while sitting in
his cave, sports was created. Since then, sports have continued to evolve and postmodern
are going to be virtual games. Technology is changing our way of life,
supporting the emergence of a more harmonised civil society. The topic of
today's seminar 'Law in Sports governance, its place in modern times' is a very
relevant topic for the present.
There are about 8000 sports
which are played all over the world. Sports can broadly be classified in two
parts. Competitive sports and Recreational sports. Competitive sports are World
Cup, Olympics, Commonwealth and Asian Games. Olympic charter, which is the law
governing sports played in Olympics has evolved over the years and that is the
law that governs them. All these laws
are private in nature and does not call for, interference by the Government, in
fact it resists any intervention. Recreational sports are what we are doing, cricket
amongst professionals, but there is serious competition in recreational sports
also. Everyone is putting his best and we are all reaching our family,
colleagues and friends round the globe.
Cricket is not yet included
in the Olympics and it has its own
independent passionate players, fans, economics, viewership, calendar and laws.
But there are some fundamental issues and laws which govern Olympics, cricket,
and all sports. In fact they govern all human relationship. The fundamental of
all human relationship is trust and breach of trust must be accounted for, for
that hits the soul. All laws are made to protect the trust and deal with
situation when breach of trust takes place. If you are out, time to walk back out
to pavilion. But you are out or not, must be decided as per rules, not human sycophancies.
That is where the law, lawyers and judges come in.
Over the decades, playing
cricket as child, watching competitive cricket, talking cricket, every ball,
every player has become an inextricable part of social life. It is the second
religion followed not by dictates of rituals, but by own passion, for many
particularly in the South Asia Region. For Europe it is Football, for USA it is
Basketball and Baseball. Sports is live
entertainment with military precision. If the player loses focus, he is gone,
the war is lost.
Geet Sethi in his book ‘Success
vs Joy’ has referred to a very meaningful story about James Watanna a young
man from Thailand who completed world tour in snooker at the age of 18. In Mita
World Cup where the prize money was 200,000 pounds, in semi-final he lost
against celebrated James White, even after leading 8-6 and lost 10-8 in a 19
frame match. When he was asked, he said that as a young boy he used to walk on
street of Bangkok and had a house in mind, which he could buy from the prize
money. In that one hundredth of second his mind travelled thousand miles to Bangkok,
and he lost the frame, the game, he tournament and the prize money.
Living in the future is
professional suicide and living in the past is more dangerous.
Sports and life in sports is living in the present. 13 months later in 1992 in
British open before entering the venue Wattana was given terrible news that his
father was shot. Wattana did not flinch and compiled a maximum break of 147
which is like taking 10 wickets in cricket. He had total control of his
emotions and was able to focus without diversion of any kind.
There are 48 stake holders
in sports industry. But the Sports industry revolves around the Sports
Association and the Players. Laws have been enacted to regulate the
conduct of both Sports Association and Players and make them accountable if
they breach the trust. The Government steps in and supports sports because it
channels the energy of the youth in the most creative way. But, there is always
a way around the laws and the laws are regularly breached. Associations breach
the trust of players by siphoning of the funds for personal use or corrupting
the process of selection, by not selecting the best performer or creating deep scars
in the mind of the deserving. Players breach the trust of the fans by making
money in match fixing or spot fixing or using drugs for enhancement of power or
using means like tempering the ball to win in the match.
I was told by Abhinav
Bindra, that in the Olympics final round, someone came and tempered with his
rifle. His foot base was shaking every time he shot. This is all breach of trust
and must be accounted for. This is where the law has to come into play.
In India we have a Sports
Code which has continued to evolve since 1982. Supreme Court of India while
dealing with S. Murgan versus Fencing Association should it's deep pain and
anguish about the disturbing state of affairs of the sports association. It was
a case relating to election of Sports Association in violation of existing
norms.
When I drafted the Rajasthan
Sports (Registration, Regulations and Recognition of Association) Act 2005, the
real issue was regulating the structure of Sports Associations in Rajasthan. It was out of sheer passion for sports, I ran 52 drafts in a period of over 6 months. All
National Associations are affiliated to an International Sports Federation. There
is no way to regulate International Sports Federations. State or Provincial Association
to respective National Association, District Associations to State Level Sports
Associations and all school, colleges, clubs and academies in the District to
the District Association. That is the pyramidal structure that should be
followed.
In the State of Rajasthan,
we have 33 District. Each District had one vote for the State Sports
Association. But the Rajasthan Cricket Association had 57 life members who had
a right to vote and all these 57 persons were person of the erstwhile President.
Most of them were his employees. They simply outnumbered the legitimate representative
of Districts. In the Rajasthan Act, we disallowed all the votes of the life
members and gave total voting rights to the 33 district level sports
association.
BCCI had in interesting situation.
They also had 33 votes. Jagmohan Dalmiya had 16 votes and the other Group had
17 votes. After the voting was over, Dalmiya used to cast a vote as
President of BCCI, that led to tie. To break the tie he casted another vote as
Chairman of the meeting and continued to win, which was not legally correct.
Rajasthan, Himachal and U.P. were three committed voted of Dalmiya having the
same structure of Sports Association as Rajasthan with Life members. I drafted
Sports Association Act for Himachal and U.P. Matter went of court challenging
the constitutional validity of the Acts. I continued to move between Rajasthan,
Himachal and UP and finally able to manage 2 critical votes, which led to
removal of Dalmiya and finally coming into of IPL. Law when properly made and
executed can bring the required change needed by the society. Law is the most powerful
tool for social change.
There are instances of
siphoning off of funds and by calculated ways to keep control of the sports
association. The funds that are siphoned off for personal use must be spent in
sports development and that is the game changer. There is need for software and
technology support at ground level to bring the best talent to the top.
The issue of payment
directly to the players by fans is rise of civil society. It is like crowd
funding. Players are the central figure of the sports industry and a entitled
to major pie in the cake. They are entitled to earn as much as possible from
the free live entertainment provided by them. Every sport has a wow factor and
that is what makes the TRP rise, that is where more money is. If you are
beating the player, you are killing the sports industry. Banning has penal
consequences and cannot be done by Sports federation or Association which are Societies
or Trusts and have no legislative power to enact penal law.
The issue that concerns
player is Match fixing, spot fixing and drugs. They all demean the beauty of
sports. It is for each player to restrain and follow the spirit of the game and
refrain from using any kind of illegal means or stimuli to win the game. NADA
and WADA are in place. Appeal from WADA goes to Switzerland Court of Appeal and
that is cumbersome. The control of a few is all pervasive.
Looking to the heavy stakes
as sports industry now is worth 1.7 trillion dollars. It is imperative to have
a sports dispute resolution system in which Judges and lawyers can play an
effective role. Sports need a quick, effective and unbiased mechanism of sports
resolution. The most important issue is the integrity and domain knowledge of
the judges who man the sports adjudication forums. We can establish a South
Asia Sports Dispute Resolution Center or Austrasia Sports Dispute Resolution
Centre.
Thank you
