Former India skipper Mohammad Azharuddin on Tuesday declared that he will fight for the Hyderabad Cricket Association’s (HCA) president post for the second time. He also assured that he will end the deep-rooted corruption in the governing body. Azharuddin's announcement came a day after Justice (retd) L Nageswara Rao, the Supreme Court-appointed administrator of HCA, prohibited 57 clubs from contesting or casting their vote in the HCA elections due to a conflict of interest. The elections are expected to take place in the next month.
HCA has the impression of being one of the most corrupt cricket associations in the country, as per PTI.
“I will fight the election which is expected to be held by September 15. I am very happy this has happened (bar on clubs) as the situation was prevailing for the last 14 years. The association was not being allowed to work (due to the club nexus). Now the association will improve a lot.
“I am not the owner of any club. As an international player I am allowed to contest the election,” Azharuddin told PTI.
The HCA will be hosting three ODI World Cup games and the tournament’s two warm-up matches. Mainly, Azharuddin will be looking to make the association self-sufficient financially and not overly reliant on BCCI funding.
“The biggest challenge is to improve the game, improve the facilities. We need to be self-sufficient financially. The other associations have a lot of funds. Hyderabad has been hand to mouth and has to depend on the BCCI, which has been magnanimous and helped in all ways possible.
“We need to have our own funds to be able to pay to the employees. We have only one ground and we must have more grounds like the other associations.
“We spend lakhs of rupees on renting grounds for local league matches and sometimes those ground are not up to the mark. When the facilities are not good the standard of cricket will go down. So we need to fix that,” said the 60-year-old.