File photo of India wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha.
The BCCI in all likelihood will ask veteran keeper Wriddhiman Saha about his recent outburst after being dropped from the Indian team as it is in violation of protocols to be followed by a centrally contracted cricketer.
The annual central contracts that players sign (Saha is in Group B with annual retainership of Rs 3 crore) has a clause 6.3, which apparently he has violated.
Clause 6.3 of players' central contract states: "Player shall not make any comments about the game, officials, incidents that happened in the game, use of technology, selection matters or any other matter related to the game which is in the opinion of the BCCI is adverse to and /or not in the interest of the game, team or BCCI in any media...."
The specific comments that Saha made across media is on his selection and his private conversations with head coach Rahul Dravid, Chetan Sharma, and BCCI president Sourav Ganguly.
The 37-year-old, whose international career ended after he was told by the team management that they wanted to groom a younger keeper, has since then come out in the public domain, putting out allegedly "threatening" WhatsApp messages from a journalist without taking names.
While the BCCI had asked Saha to name the journalist, the parent body is apparently unhappy about his comments where he has made a private conversation with Dravid public and also spoke about a message sent by the BCCI president.
"Yes, there is a possibility that BCCI could ask Wriddhiman as to how he spoke on selection matters being a centrally contracted cricketer," Arun Dhumal told PTI.
"As far as the president is concerned, he had tried to motivate him. The board might like to know what made him go public with his dressing room conversations with coach Dravid."
So will BCCI serve a formal showcause notice or ask him verbally about the issue?
"We haven't yet decided on the matter. We are all busy but a call will be taken on a few days," he said.
Many people in BCCI believe that Saha should have refrained from making his conversations with Dravid public as it has certainly dented his image a bit.
"Rahul Dravid said that he is not "hurt" but wanted to clearly communicate with the player. It's a private conversation and even if he was hurt, he should have kept quiet. Dravid became a bigger person as what Saha did was show the head coach in a bad light," a senior BCCI official said.
(Reported by PTI)
